// fpn source for Letters from Switzerland, by Samuel Irenæus Prime
// last edit: 23-Aug-2014

.dt Letters from Switzerland, by Samuel Irenæus Primex

.if t
Transcriber's Notes:

When italics were used in the original book, the corresponding text has
been surrounded by _underscores_. Ditto marks have been replaced by the
text they represent.

Some presumed printer's errors have been corrected. In particular,
punctuation has been normalized and duplicate words were removed.
Other corrections are listed below with the original text (top) and the
replacement text (bottom):

.nf b
  Contents: Gerni
            Gemmi

  Chapter I: herren
             Herren

             Schaffhaussen
             Schaffhausen

  Chapter II: intere t
              interest

  Chapter III: caries
               carries

  Chapter IV: withont
              without

  Chapter V: fouud
             found

  Chapter VI: Agazziz
              Agassiz

              eating-roon
              eating-room

  Chapter VII: cotages
               cottages

               Reichenback
               Reichenbach

               Alpback
               Alpbach

               white lace vails
               white lace veils

  Chapter VIII: replendent
                resplendent

                Grindenwald
                Grindelwald

  Chapter IX: visiters
              visitors

               puplis
               pupils

  Chapter X: businesss
             business

  Chapter XII: T56M[symbol]
               The

  Chapter XIII: benificent
                beneficent

                Grindewald
                Grindelwald

  Chapter XIV: fearfuly
               fearfully
.nf-
.if-

.if h
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.li
<div class="tnotes covernote">
  <p><b>Transcriber's Note:</b></p>
  <p>The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.</p>
</div>
.li-
.if-

.pb

.il id=i01 fn=i_a_002.jpg w=339
.ca INTERLACHEN AND THE JUNGFRAU.
.pb

.h1
<xl>Letters from Switzerland.</xl>

.hr 30%

.nf c
<s>BY</s>
SAMUEL IRENÆUS PRIME,

<s>AUTHOR OF “TRAVELS IN EUROPE AND THE EAST,”
&C., &C.</s>
.nf-

.hr 30%

.nf c
NEW YORK:
SHELDON & COMPANY, 115 Nassau Street.
<s>BOSTON: GOULD & LINCOLN.</s>
1860.
.nf-

.pb

.nf c
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1860, by
SHELDON & COMPANY,
In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court for the Southern District of
New-York.
.nf-


.pb

.h2
CONTENTS.

.sp 2
.nf c
CHAPTER I

 #BASLE AND THE RHINE.:ch01#
.nf-

.in +3
.ti -3
The Three Kings—Cathedral—Council of Basle—Puritan rules—Dance of
Death—Seats in the Diligence—Supplement—The Rhine—An Alderman
in trouble—Dining in haste—English manners—Girls in holiday dress—Falls
of the Rhine—Niagara—Up the river—Old nunneries—Gottlieben—Prisons
of Huss and Jerome of Prague.
.in

.rj
Pages 9-20

.nf c
CHAPTER II

 #CONSTANCE AND ZURICH.:ch02#
.nf-

.in +3
.ti -3
A decaying Town—the Kaufhaus—Famous Council—Dungeon of Huss—Scene
of Martyrdom—House of Huss—Lake Constance—the Ride to
Zurich—Villages—the Valley—Hotel Baur—a Swiss Cottage—the Furnishing—Miles
Coverdale—Zwingle—Lavater’s Grave—the Library—Sunset
View from the Botanical Garden.
.in

.rj
Pages 21-31

.nf c
CHAPTER III.

 #THE MOUNTAIN TOPS.:ch03#
.nf-

.in +3
.ti -3
Climbing the Utleberg—Fat woman on a donkey—First Alpine view—The
valley, lake and hills—Haunts of Lavater, Zimmerman, Klopstock, Gessner—The
work of Escher—Coming Down—Baur Hotel—Lake Zurich—Lake
Zug—Golda—Land-side—Ruin—Ascent of the Rigi—The best route—Chapels
by the way—Mary of the Snow—Convent and monks—The
Summit—The Company—Change of Temperature—Sunset—Supper—Night—Sunrise—Glory
of the view—Getting down again—Fat man
done up.
.in

.rj
Pages 32-53

.nf c
CHAPTER IV.

 #LUCERNE AND THE LAND OF TELL.:ch04#
.nf-

.in +3
.ti -3
The Lake—Avalanches—Pontius Pilate—Lucerne—Dance of Death—Fishing—Storm
on the Lake—Ramble among the Peasantry—Two Dwarfs—On the
Lake—Rifle Shooting—Chapel of William Tell—Scenes in his Life—Altorf—Hay-Making—a
Great Day.
.in

.rj
Pages 54-80

.nf c
CHAPTER V.

 #PASS OF ST. GOTHARD:ch05#
.nf-

.in +3
.ti -3
The Priest’s Leap—The Devil’s Bridge—Night on the Mountains—Storm—Hospenthal—the
Glaciers—a Lady in Distress—the Furca Pass—Glacier of
the Rhone—Heinrich and Nature—Heinrich asks after God—Scene in the
Hospice.
.in

.rj
Pages 81-106

.nf c
CHAPTER VI.

 #GLACIERS OF THE AAR.:ch06#
.nf-

.in +3
.ti -3
My new Friend—a Wonderful Youth—Hospice of the Grimsel—the Valley—a
comfortable Day—Glaciers of the Aar—a Gloomy Vale—Climbing a Hill—View
of the Glacier—Theory of its Formation—Caverns in the Ice—Incidents
of Men falling in—My Leap and Fall—an Artist Lost—Return.
.in

.rj
Pages 107-121

.nf c
CHAPTER VII.

 #MOUNTAINS, STREAMS AND FALLS.:ch07#
.nf-

.in +3
.ti -3
Pedestrianism—Mountain Torrents—Fall of the Handek—The Guide and his
Little Ones—Falls of the Reichenbach—Perilous Point of View.
.in

.rj
Pages 122-145

.nf c
CHAPTER VIII.

 #A GLACIER AND AVALANCHE.:ch08#
.nf-

.in +3
.ti -3
Alpine Horn—Beggars—The Rosenlaui Glacier—Beautiful Views—Glorious
Mountain Scenes—Mrs. Kinney’s “Alps”—A Lady and Babe—The Great
Scheidek—Grindelwald—Eagle and Bear—Battle with Bugs—Wengern
Alp—A real Avalanche—The Jungfrau.
.in

.rj
Pages 146-165

.nf c
CHAPTER IX.

 #INTERLACHEN AND BERNE.:ch09#
.nf-

.in +3
.ti -3
The Staubach Fall—Lauterbrunnen—Interlachen—Cretins and Goitre—Dr.
Guggenbuhl—Giesbach Fall—Berne—Inquisitive Lady—Swiss Creed—Crossing
the Gemmi—Leuchenbad Baths.
.in

.rj
Pages 166-180

.nf c
CHAPTER X.

 #MONKS OF ST. BERNARD.:ch10#
.nf-

.in +3
.ti -3
The Char-a-banc—the Napoleon Pass—Travellers in winter—Monks—Dogs—Dinner—Music—Dead
House—Contributions—a Monk’s Kiss.
.in

.rj
Pages 181-192

.nf c
CHAPTER XI.

 #FIRST SIGHT OF MONT BLANC.:ch11#
.nf-

.in +3
.ti -3
The Host of Martigny—Vale of the Drance—Mount Rosa—Tete Noire—Col de
Balm—The Monarch of the Alps.
.in

.rj
Pages 193-204

.nf c
CHAPTER XII.

 #GENEVA:ch12#
.nf-

.in +3
.ti -3
A good House—Prisoner of Chillon—Calvin—Dr. Malan—Dr. Gaussen—Col.
Tronchin—the Cemetery.
.in

.rj
Pages 205-213

.nf c
CHAPTER XIII.

 #PICTURES IN SWITZERLAND.:ch13#
.nf-

.in +3
.ti -3
Waterfalls—Constance—Zurich—William Tell—Glaciers—the Monarch.
.in

.rj
Pages 214-246

.nf c
CHAPTER XIV.

 #SAXON SWYTZ.:ch14#
.nf-


.in +3
.ti -3
A Model Guide—the Bastei—Banditti of old—a Cataract to Order—Scaling a
Rampart—Konigstein—the Kuhstall—the Great Winterberg—Prebisch
Thor—Looking Back.
.in

.rj
Pages 247-264

.pb

.ce
<xl>SWITZERLAND.</xl>

.hr 30%

.sp 2
.h2 id=ch01 nobreak
CHAPTER I.||BASLE AND THE RHINE.

.in +3
.ti -3
The Three Kings—Cathedral—Council of Basle—Puritan rules—Dance of
Death—Seats in the Diligence—Supplement—The Rhine—An Alderman
in trouble—Dining in haste—English manners—Girls in holiday dress—Falls
of the Rhine—Niagara—Up the river—Old nunneries—Gottlieben—Prisons
of Huss and Jerome of Prague.
.in
.sp 2

.di i_b_009.jpg 100 170 1.2
Switzerland, to be seen
aright, must be entered from
Germany. Many travellers rush
from Paris to Geneva, and beginning
with Chamouni and Mont
Blanc come down from the greater
to the less, tapering off with the
beautiful instead of rising to the
sublime. One lovely summer day
in the early part of the month of August, we left
Baden Baden, where we had been resting after a tour
in Belgium, Holland, Prussia, Saxony, Saxon Switzerland,
Austria, Bavaria, and Bohemia, and came by
the Duke of Baden’s railroad to Basle.

The hotel de <i>Trois Rois</i>, or, <i>Three Kings</i>,
was reluctant to receive us, so great was the rush
of company. Large as some of our own first class
hotels, it was crowded to overflowing, but we found
lodgings for three at the top of the house. It stands
on the very borders of the river Rhine, which
rushes by with a powerful current, and the verandah
in front overhanging the stream is a pleasant lounge
after a weary day of travel. Lodgings for three gentlemen,
or in German, “fur drei Herren,” we had
so often asked for, that we came to be called the
“Drei Herren,” or “dry herring,” as it sounded in
our English ears.

The river forms a broad and noble stream along
the sloping bank on which the city stands; the Jura
mountains rise on one side, and the hills of the
Black Forest on the other, while the intermediate
region is richly covered with vegetation, and the villas
of a wealthy class of people who have retired from the
city, or who own the soil. Basle is a goodly town, and
if the people have some rigid notions of morality in the
judgment of travellers of easy virtue, it is refreshing
to come into a city where the shops are closed of a
Sunday, and every one is required to be at home by
eleven o’clock at night. A city that bore so conspicuous
a part in the Reformation, and still cherishes
the ashes of so many great and good men, ought not
to lose its veneration for the spirit and principles of
the past. In the <i>Cathedral</i>, now in process of renovation,
we stood over the dust of the learned <sc>Erasmus</sc>,
read his epitaph in Latin, walked among the
beautiful cloisters which have been burial places for
the wise and good for more than <i>six</i> hundred years!
where the monuments stand of Grynæus, and Meyer,
and Œcolampadius, men who were mighty in the
Scriptures, in the days when such men were few.
We walked through the portal of St. Gallus, under
the statues of Christ and Peter, and the wise and
foolish Virgins, and admired the pulpit of three pieces
of stone, carved with great skill and effect; and then
we were led to the chamber where the Council of
Basle held its sessions, beginning in 1436, and lasting
eight years. It has undergone no alterations in
the four hundred years which have since elapsed. In
the <i>Library</i> are preserved manuscripts of Luther,
Melancthon, Erasmus and Zwingle, and a huge
volume in which illustrious visitors had inscribed
their names for two hundred years. The celebrated
pictures of the <i>Dance of Death</i> once adorned the
walls of the Dominican church in Basle, and a few
of them still preserved are now hung up in this collection,
among others of greater merit but less fame,
by Holbein. A beautiful picture, which I have seen
attempted with far less success before, presents a
Venus sleeping by the side of a stream, and a skull
lying near her, and flowers blooming around, to
illustrate the lines: <i>Mortis imago sopor: velut amnis
labitur ætas, vix forma reliquium pulvis et ossa
manent.</i> “The image of death is sleep: like the
river life glides away, and dust and bones, the only
relics of departed beauty, are left behind.” In
the next room the same sentiment is more impressively
taught from an uncovered sarcophagus, in
which a female mummy grins horribly at you, as you
look into the narrow house which she has slept in for
two or three thousand years.

The architecture of this old Swiss town is very
curious, and many of the most antique gateways and
fortifications, towers and walls, remain to this hour,
showing the quaint but not bad devices in the way
of ornament, which were in use 450 years ago. In
old times, too, they had moral laws here quite as
stringent as those imputed to our New England
ancestors. On the Sabbath, no one might go to
church unless dressed in black; the number of dishes
and the quantity of wine for a dinner party were
regulated by law, as well as the style and quality of
clothes. The good people used to put religious
mottoes over their doors, and one or two public
houses still have them:

.nf b
“In God I build my hopes of grace,
The ancient Pig’s my dwelling place.”
.nf-

And another still more earnest:

.nf b
“Wake and repent your sins with grief,
I’m called the Golden Shin of Beef.”
.nf-

The gates of the town are closed on the Sabbath
day during the hours of service, and an outward
respect paid to the day which is creditable to the
people. In the hotel, a small room has been fitted
up neatly as a chapel for an English service, a custom
not unusual in Switzerland, where English travellers
are flocking constantly.

Basle is the great starting point for Swiss travelling
for those who enter the German frontier. We have
now come to the end of railroads, and must depend
on horses or go afoot. The sooner one takes his
place in the <i>diligence</i> after arriving, the more likely
he is to have a good seat when he wishes to depart,
and though we were early for this, no less than
twelve had the start of us, and the coach carried
only nine. “You shall have a <i>supplement</i>,” we were
told, and at nine in the morning with twenty-five
travellers we were at the <i>Post Office</i>, to be despatched
with the mails and the females to Schaffhausen.
This posting is a Government concern, and
the postmaster has charge of the horses as well as
the letters. There was no place but the middle of
the street in which to remain, till at the appointed
hour the heavy diligence lumbered up to the door:
the nine predestinated thereunto took their seats; an
omnibus and one or two carriages by way of supplement,
received the rest of us, many grumbling
grievously that they had not places in the coach, and
others preferring as we did, an easy carriage with a
party of four. The postillion dressed in a yellow
jacket with a brass horn under his arm, with which
he amused himself and the country people as he
passed, mounted the box, and we soon crossed the
Rhine, and followed its banks upward for many a
pleasant mile. The morning was fine after a rainy
night, clear, cool and bracing; the distant Alps were
constantly in sight on the right, and the winding,
often rapid, always beautiful river, with its vine-clad
shores and smiling cottages was by our side. We
left the carriage at <i>Lauffenburg</i>, and walked to the
banks of the Rhine, where the river is choked into a
narrow gorge, and dashes with terrible force through
a deep sunk channel, among opposing rocks, making
a fearful pass in which an English nobleman lost his
life, attempting to make the rapids in a little boat.
Resuming our seats, we found one of our fellow travellers
belonging to the diligence, Alderman —— of
New York left behind. The coach was out of call,
and the best he could do was to mount the edge of
the postillion’s single seat in front of our carriage and
ride on to the next post town. The Alderman was
heavy, the place was too strait for him, and I suggested
that a <i>franc</i> would buy the whole seat. He
tried the effect of it, the postillion took the silver,
dropped down upon the foot rest, and the Alderman
had the seat to himself. In an hour we stopped to
dine. Perhaps we were here a few moments sooner
than mine host of the <i>Waldshut</i> Hotel expected us,
for the dinner was not on the table, but it gave us a
fine opportunity to observe a specimen of manners
sufficiently characteristic to be made a matter of
record. At the table there sat ten English, six German,
and seven American ladies and gentlemen.
The dishes were slow in coming in; the English gentlemen
all having ladies under their care, left the
table, rushed into the kitchen, seized the best dishes
of meats they could find, brought them to their own
places, and helping themselves and their ladies, devoured
them in the presence of the more barbarous
Germans and Americans, who looked on with amazement.
I took the liberty of remarking that it was an
outrage, of which I had never before seen an example
in civilized life, and was happy to observe that the
practice was confined to a single nation out of the
number represented here. An English lady gave me
an approving nod, but the men were too far gone in
beef and sour wine to pay any attention to lessons in
good breeding. As might be expected, the leader in
this grab-game grumbled at his bill, declared he was
charged for more wine than he had drunk, and laid
himself out in abusing Swiss taverns in general, and
this in particular, till the postman’s horn summoned
him and the rest to their seats.

The scenery improves as we ascend the Rhine.
The banks are steeper, the hills are bolder; the water
rushes more rapidly through winding channels, and
the people we meet bear more characteristic features
of another country. It is a Catholic holiday. We
are meeting the peasantry in great numbers, dressed
in their best clothes, some of them gaily; blooming
lasses in snow white muslin and no bonnets, but
sweet pretty head-dresses and pink ribbons tied as
pretty girls in all countries know how to tie them;
they are gathering at the churches, and as they
wend their way through green fields to the highway,
they give a romantic air to the rural picture we
are looking on. Many of them are paired, and as
they saunter along hand in hand, and now and then
with an arm thrown lovingly round the waist, we
know them as probably paired for life, and send up
a little prayer that they may jog along as pleasantly
all the way through.

“The finest Cataract in Europe” is at Schaffhausen.
We arrived at sunset, just in time to see the
falls before the last rays had faded into night. The
Rhine is here 300 feet broad, and after foaming and
rushing furiously for a mile or two it takes a bold
leap over a shelving precipice sixty feet high, and
plunges into a bay of waters below, boiling like a
mighty caldron and sending up perpetual clouds of
spray. In the midst of the cataract two columnar
rocks rise perpendicularly, dividing the fall into
three unequal parts. One of these rocks is clothed
with shrubbery and the steep banks on either side
are lined with trees. A castellated mansion crowns
the summit on one side, and several buildings grace
the other, so that nature and art have here combined
to make a picture of wild romantic beauty, in which
there is enough of grandeur to entitle it, at times, to
be called sublime. Certainly we should so pronounce
it, if we had not seen the waterfalls of America.

The only place to see a fall to perfection is directly
in front of it. We are told to cross the river and go
up the hill to a jutting crag and there in the midst of
the spray, contemplate the “hell of waters,” roaring
and tumbling madly on their way into the dreadful
deeps below. We went over, but nothing satisfies
me but to see a waterfall from its base. It was an
easy matter to induce two stout oarsmen to put the
nose of their skiff into the teeth of the cataract, and
drive her up as near to the falling torrent as their
strength would fetch her. I knew the strong
current would send the little shell down stream, like
an arrow, when they crossed the eddies and struck
the channel; and so it proved. We toiled on till the
spray-like rain covered us, and there we looked up
at the white waves as they marched in fury down
upon us, threatening to overwhelm the frail bark
tossing on the surface as a shell. When we had
studied the scene from various points of view, we
returned to the shore and met a party of English
gentlemen and ladies at Castle <i>Worth</i>, which commands
a fine sight of the falls. “How does it
compare with Niagara,” one of them enquired of me.
I replied, “We do not love to make comparisons
between these beautiful scenes and those we have
left at home. Nature there is more majestic in her
works, and there is no sight on earth where so much
majesty crowned with beauty is revealed as in the
cataract of Niagara. You see that hill which bounds
this valley on the west and that higher one which
shuts it in above where the Rhine comes down: those
hills are not so far asunder as the river of Niagara is
at the moment it falls! It is a lake broader than
this beautiful vale and the precipice to whose brow
it comes is loftier than the turrets of that castle, now
fading from our view. It comes not creeping down
the rocks like <i>that</i>, but gathering itself up and with
one mighty leap, clearing the barrier, it pours its
awful flood, as if an ocean had been spilled, into the
abyss below. In the moonlight and in the sunshine
rainbows are twined upon its brow, and garlands of
diamonds hang from the summit to the base, in
beauty indescribable.”

We climbed up to the hotel Weber, which stands
on the brow of the hill, and the good man of the
house gave us a chamber in full view of the falls,
where we went to sleep with the roar of the tumult
of many waters in our ears, making music the last
we heard at night, and the first in the morning.
Now the grandeur of the distant Alps began to
appear. Long ranges, peak towering above peak,
are seen; the names of some of them are familiar, as
they stand there inviting us to come to their feet.
Let us go.

.sp 2

<i>Aug. 16.</i>—Refreshed by a sweet sleep, and ready
for another fine day, we were taken after breakfast
to the village of Schaffhausen, where a small steamboat
received us for <i>Constance</i>. The current of the
Rhine above the falls is not so swift as below, but
the waters are the same deep green, increased
by the reflection of the beautiful sloping banks,
covered with luxuriant vineyards. The vines are
trained on short upright poles, not on arbors as with
us, and at a distance they look not unlike our corn
fields. But the river is so narrow here that we seem
to be in the midst of them, and enjoy the labors of
the dressers, as they work in the sun. Now we are
passing the old nunneries of Paradies, and Katherinethal,
and that ancient castle above the town of
Stein is Hohenlingen, once the abode of the masters
of all this soil. Here is the island of <i>Reichenau</i>,
where the remains of an ancient monastery are seen,
and on the right as we are ascending is the castle of
<i>Gottlieben</i>, where John Huss and Jerome of Prague
were confined in gloomy dungeons from which they
were dragged to trial and death.

.sp 2

And this brings us to <sc>Constance</sc>.



.sp 4
.h2 id=ch02
CHAPTER II.||CONSTANCE AND ZURICH.

.in +3
.ti -3
A decaying Town—the Kaufhaus—Famous Council—Dungeon of Huss—Scene
of Martyrdom—House of Huss—Lake Constance—the Ride to
Zurich—Villages—the Valley—Hotel Baur—a Swiss Cottage—the Furnishing—Miles
Coverdale—Zwingle—Lavater’s Grave—the Library—Sunset
View from the Botanical Garden.
.in
.sp 2

.di i_b_021.jpg 100 170 1.2
Forty thousand people once lived
together within the walls of Constance.
Now less than seven thousand
are here. But the old and
curious houses still stand, many of
them without inhabitants, and the
whole city apparently asleep at noonday
as we entered. The historic
interest hanging about Constance is
very great, and will always render it attractive to
the traveller. On the borders of the lake of Constance,
and but a very few feet from the landing, we saw
the <i>Kaufhaus</i>, built in 1338, and memorable as the
place in which the great “Council of Constance” sat
in 1414-18, whose decision for good and for evil were
so momentous in the Church of Rome. We walked
up the solid steps into the second story, one wide low
room supported by heavy wooden pillars, and with a
rough plank floor like that of a barn. Here, in this
room, more than four hundred years ago were
assembled from all parts of the Christian world, no
less than thirty cardinals, four patriarchs, twenty
archbishops, one hundred and fifty bishops, two
hundred professors of theology, besides princes,
ambassadors, civil and ecclesiastical, abbots, priors,
and inferior churchmen. The chair in which the
Emperor Sigismund sat, and the chair in which the
Pope presided, stand as they stood then, and various
relics of those times, historically associated with the
Council, are gathered, forming a Museum of unusual
interest. Before this council John Huss and Jerome
of Prague were brought from their dungeons, and
though the Council was assembled professedly to
reform the church, it condemned these holy men to
the flames.

The old Cathedral is here, where those martyrs
stood when the sentence of death was passed upon
them, and the model of the dungeon not three feet
wide and ten feet long, with the identical door and
window in it, where Huss was confined for many
weary months. Here too is the hurdle on which he
was dragged to the place of execution, and when we
had examined these and many interesting objects
which a Catholic claiming to be the friend of Huss
showed us, we walked out of the old chamber, and
following the long street to the Huss Gate, found
beyond the walls of the town, in the midst of a garden,
the spot where these blessed men were caught
up by chariots of fire into heaven. An old Capuchin
convent, deserted now, is standing near it, and so
peaceful and fertile seemed these fields as we stood
in the midst of the fruits and flowers, it was hard to
believe an infuriated mob had once rioted here, and
religious persecution kindled the fires of martyrdom
on the flesh of men of whom the world was not
worthy.

In the Council Chamber are wax figures of these
martyrs, bearing the records which I copied. “Jerome
of Prague, called Faulfisch, a learned man of great
celebrity, the friend and defender of John Huss, born
at Prague, March 14, 1362; burned alive in consequence
of the order of the Council of Constance,
May 30, 1417, in the 55th year of his age. Jerome
walked to the place of punishment, as though he
went to a place of rejoicing. When the executioner
was going to set fire to the pile behind him, Jerome
said to him, ‘Come here, light it before me, for if I
had feared the fire, I would not have been here.’”

“John Huss, of Housenitts in Bohemia, born
July 6, 1373, rector of the University and lecturer at
Prague, burned alive at Constance in consequence of
the order of the Council, July 6, 1415, in the 42d
year of his age. His last words were, ‘I resign my
soul to the hands of my God and my Redeemer.’”

Returning from the place of execution, we paused
in front of the house in which John Huss lodged
before he was imprisoned. A rude image in stone of
the Reformer, but a strongly marked likeness, was on
the outside. Every one we met could tell us which
way to go to find the Huss house, and though there
are but a few hundred Protestants in the whole city,
the idea seemed to be general that a good man was
wrongfully and cruelly murdered when Huss was
burned.

In the after part of the day, as the shades of evening
were drawing around us, we had a boat and went
out on the Lake, and skirted along its shores, passing
a large monastery where a few brothers of the Augustine
order are still maintained, and a few miles
beyond is a long and beautifully planted nunnery
which was suppressed in 1838, and converted into a
hospital, though the sisters are permitted to live and
die there, without adding to their number. This is
the largest of all the Swiss lakes, and lies 1255 feet
above the level of the sea. We floated around until
the evening became so cool that we were glad to go
ashore. Passing an ancient-looking church of which
the door was standing open, we walked in: a solitary
lamp was burning near the altar, and the sound of
voices led us down the aisle to a door opening into
one of the cloisters where a group of boys were on
their knees, repeating prayers in concert, and vieing
with each other in the loudness and sing-song tone
with which they performed the service. We returned
to our hotel by the light of lamps hung in the middle
of a chain stretched across the street, and went early
to bed as we were early to rise.

.sp 2

<i>Aug. 17.</i>—We went by diligence to Zurich to-day.
The ride was pleasant. Some of the Swiss towns we
passed through were very pretty, showing so much
taste in the grounds about the houses, that one was
sure there was a pleasant home. Part of the way
was called the Roman road, and the remains of the
ancient presence of that people are still visible. The
river <i>Thur</i> flows along in the valley of the road, and
its banks are lined with frequent mansions. Chateaus
of elegance are on the hill-sides, and just after
leaving Constance we passed one in which the present
Emperor of France once resided, and which still
belongs to him. <i>Frauenfeld</i> is a fine town where we
paused to dine, and I there celebrated the day as an
anniversary that I am quite sure was not forgotten
elsewhere. <i>Winterthur</i> is really a beautiful city.
Its streets intersect one another at right angles, and
each intersection has an arched gateway, surmounted
by a tower with a clock. As we advance into Switzerland,
the scenery becomes more commanding:
now and then a sharp blue peak shoots up into the
sky, and as the road descends we lose sight of it
again, to see the same and others as we rise. At last
as the day was closing, we came suddenly upon
<sc>Zurich</sc>, the capital of the canton of the same name,
the most thriving city in Switzerland, and rejoicing
in the midst of one of the most beautiful valleys in
the world. I should be deemed extravagant were I
to speak of it as it appeared to me when descending
through vineyards and gardens, and among elegant
mansions, to the shores of the lake on which this city
stands. The Hotel <i>Baur</i> is the largest and best in
the town, but it was crowded, and the gentlemanly
landlord said the best he could do for us was to give
us rooms in a private house adjoining his own. To
this we assented with the more readiness, as it would
bring us at once into the residence of the Swiss, and
we could see more of their indoor life than the hotel
would furnish. There is no carpet on the floor,
except a beautiful square on which the centre-table
with a pot of flowers is standing. A piano with music
and books is on one side, a sofa covered with white
dimity on the other. The chamber looks out on a
square, and the windows fill the entire front of the
room, but rich lace curtains hang before them, and
some of the panes of glass are replaced with porcelain
pictures of exceeding loveliness. Before the
mirror is suspended a vase, like a pendant lamp, in
which a plant is growing, with its leaves as on silver
threads falling gracefully on every side of it. Another
flower-pot has a plant trained upon a flat frame,
in the centre of which is one of these porcelain pictures
through which the light is streaming. Around
the walls are many engravings in neat frames, and on
the mantel and side-tables are various ornaments,
chiefly curiously carved figures in wood, or beautiful
glass-work, all displaying the taste of their possessor,
and telling us all the time that these are the domestic
precincts of some one who has let the lodgings for a
season. These delicate cushions of pink silk with
white lace edging, assure me that a lady is the rightful
tenant; but I am tired, and shall slip into the
linen sheets. Good night.

.sp 2

<i>Aug. 18.</i>—To-day we have been exploring Zurich,
a city famous in the history of the Reformation and
dear to every Protestant heart. Here the exiles of
England, when Bloody Mary was on the throne,
found a hiding-place from her bitter persecutions.
Here the first entire English version of the Bible, by
<i>Miles Coverdale</i>, was printed in 1535. From my
window I see the cathedral where Zwingle, the
soldier of the Reformation who resisted unto blood
striving against sin, once thundered the wrath of
heaven upon the abominations of the Church of
Rome. Here is the house yet standing in which he
passed the last six years of his noble life. The clock
of St. Peter is now striking. This church had for its
pastor for twenty-three years the celebrated <i>Lavater</i>,
author of the work on Physiognomy. He was born
here, and in the door of the parsonage which I visited
to-day, he was shot by a brutal soldier, when the
town was taken by the French in 1799. He had
given wine and money to his murderer but a few
minutes before: and though he lingered for three
months, he refused to give up the name of the assassin
to the French commander, who desired to punish the
atrocious deed. I plucked a flower and a sprig of
myrtle from his grave in the humble churchyard of
St. Anne, where a simple tablet to his memory bears
this inscription: “J. C. Lavater’s Grave. Born 15th
Nov. 1741. Died 2d Jan. 1801.” In the town
library of 45,000 volumes, admirably arranged, is a
fine marble bust of Lavater, and also of Pestalozzi,
with portraits of Zwingle and many other reformers.
But I was more interested in reading several manuscript
letters in Latin, by Lady Jane Grey, Joanna
Graia, addressed to Bullinger. The beautiful execution
of the writing, the quotations in Greek and
Hebrew, the spirit they breathed, and the fate of
their lovely author, gave them sacred interest.
Here, too, in his own Bible is the family record of
Zwingle and his wife Anna Bullinger; and many
Greek and Arabic manuscripts which Dr. Raffles or
Dr. Sprague would give a heap of guineas to get.

It is said that the sunset view of the city, valley,
lake, and mountains is not surpassed by any scene in
Switzerland. We had been so busy in these old and
interesting scenes, that the day was gone before we
knew it, and as we walked out to climb the hill, from
which the view is to be had, we feared the sun had
already set. Part of the old rampart of the town
remains, an elevated mound which has been tastefully
laid out with walks and planted with shrubs
and flowers, for a botanical garden. On the summit
fine shade-trees stand, and here is one of the most
beautiful promenades in the world. The sun was
half an hour high, and just as we reached the hill-top
it began to come down from behind a dense
cloud, like a mass of molten gold distilled into a
transparent globe. Its liquid form appeared to
tremble as it came forth; but the face of nature
smiled in his returning beams. The nearer summits
first caught the brightness, and then the more distant,
invisible before, now stood forth in their
majesty, shining in the sunlight. Below me lay the
lake like a silver sea. And all along its shores and
far up the hill-sides, thousands of white cottages and
villas, the abodes of wealth and peace and love,
sweet Swiss homes, rejoiced in the sunshine, as they
sent up their evening psalm of praise from ten thousand
happy hearts to God. A hundred years hence
our valleys may be so peopled: but we have none
now like this. For a thousand years these hill-sides
have been tilled, and all these acres, wrested from
the forest, and subdued by the hand of industry and
art, have been planted with corn and wine, neat and
many splendid mansions have been reared in every
nook and on every sunny slope, and now on all sides
the panorama seems to present the very spot where
learning, religion, taste and peace would delight to
find a refuge and a home. It is now sunset in the
valley. The lake is dark. The last ray has played
on the spire of St. Peter and the Minster. But the
dome of the Dodi still gleams in the sun, and the
far-off Glarus and Uri are reflecting his lingering
beams.

They are gone. The rose-tints have faded from
the loftiest summit of snow, and the sun has gone
down to rise on those dearer to me than his light, in
a distant land.



.sp 4
.h2 id=ch03
CHAPTER III.||THE MOUNTAIN TOPS.

.in +3
.ti -3
Climbing the Utleberg—Fat woman on a donkey—First Alpine view—The
valley, lake and hills—Haunts of Lavater, Zimmerman, Klopstock, Gessner—The
work of Escher—Coming Down—Baur Hotel—Lake Zurich—Lake
Zug—Golda—Land-side—Ruin—Ascent of the Rigi—The best route—Chapels
by the way—Mary of the Snow—Convent and monks—The
Summit—The Company—Change of Temperature—Sunset—Supper—Night—Sunrise—Glory
of the view—Getting down again—Fat man
done up.
.in
.sp 2


.rj
<sc>August 19.</sc>

.di i_b_032.jpg 100 170 1.2
Rankin challenged me this morning
to walk to the heights of Utleberg,
on the Albis ridge, to the west
of Zurich. The Utleberg is only
three thousand feet high! and that
is a small matter in Switzerland.
After a cup of coffee we set off at
eight in the morning, and without
guide or mules we wandered out of
the town, across the river, and through beautiful
vineyards, with luxuriant grapes, not ripe enough to
be tempting. We climbed along up the hill-side.
Other parties were on their way, some German, some
French, some English, none American but ourselves.
At the foot of the hill we met a flock of milk white
goats, which their owner was driving down from the
mountains to sell in town; beautiful creatures; for
the first, we learned that beauty could be affirmed
of a goat. Here the lame and the lazy supplied
themselves with mules, and a comical figure of a fat
German lady on a miserable little donkey, will be an
amusing memory for many a day. When she was
half way up the mountain she looked so jaded with
the jerking, that we thought she would have suffered
less if she had carried the donkey. We cut stout
sticks in the forest, and pushed on, stopping now and
then to pick flowers, or to examine a leech or a lizard,
in the pools and streams by the side of the path,
resting when tired, but pressing onward and upward,
steadily and slowly; encouraged often by the splendor
of the scene below, as we caught it from some opening
in the woods, and feeling that we had the day
before us and nothing else to do. The ascent became
steeper as we pressed along, and it doubtless seemed
steeper to us the more we were wearied with the way,
but we made it in less than two hours, winding
around the mighty rock that caps the apex, and
entered the house of refreshment before we looked
off into the world below.

I had not felt myself in Switzerland till on this
summit, we saw for the first time a real Alpine view.
It has <i>points</i> of view peculiar to itself, nationally
characteristic; there is nothing got up on the same
scale and the same plan in any other part of God’s
great world. Why it pleased him to heap these hills
in such “confusion unconfused,” in this little country,
we do not know, but they who would see the most
remarkable of his works in mountain-building, must
come here and climb up to some of the highest peaks,
where they can take in at once as much of the
majesty of the scene as each man’s mind can hold.
Rankin and I reasoned some time on the question
whether these lofty ranges were clouds in the heavens
or mountains propping up the sky. Now the problem
is solved. What we thought might be white clouds,
are the snowy ridges of the distant hills, and the dark
blue mountains are now facing us as from one height
across the valley we see them without looking up.

The vale of Zurich lies at our feet. The lake for
twenty-five miles, and with a breadth of not more
than three, stretches itself more like a river than a
lake, through the valley to the south as far as we can
see; and the hills rise very gradually from the water
affording the most delightful grounds for vineyards;
while scores of villages, each with its church spire,
are scattered on each side, and between the villages
so many dwellings are seen, that the whole valley,
with its dense population, seems but one great
family; certainly, it is one neighborhood, where
industry, religion, intelligence and happiness, ought
to flourish and have their reward. Thalwyl may be
seen away to the south, near to which Lavater wrote
a portion of his work on Physiognomy; and still
farther on is Richtensweil, where Zimmerman lived,
whose work on “Solitude” celebrates the praises of
this spot. So does Klopstock in his ode, and Gessner,
the Swiss poet, who was born in Zurich and has a
monument reared to his memory in one of its
delightful promenades. There, too, is Stafa, where
Goethe once resided, and Rapperschuyl, with the
longest bridge in the world, it is said, four thousand
eight hundred feet, or three-fourths of a mile; but I
think the Cayuga bridge is longer. There lies a
beautiful islet, in which Ulrich Von Hutten, the
friend of Luther, found a refuge and a grave. Look
away to Usnach, and you see a valley out of which
the river <i>Linth</i> is flowing; connected with it is a
remarkable story. Yesterday in the churchyard of
St. Anne, we saw a massive rough stone, with a polished
spot in the midst of it, on which was engraved
in gilt letters, “Escher, Von der Linth,” or Escher of
the Linth. The title had plainly been given him for
some work connected with the Swiss river of that
name. Some thirty or forty years ago the river,
coming down from the glaciers, and bringing with it
a vast quantity of stones and soil, had become so
much obstructed, that the valley was repeatedly overflowed,
terrible pestilences followed, and the inhabitants
swept off in great numbers. Conrad Escher
suggested to the government the idea of digging a
new bed for the river, and turning its waters off into
another lake, the Wallenstadt, where its deposits
would be received without injury. This lake he connected
with that of Zurich by a navigable canal, and
so complete was the success of all his suggestions,
that he is looked upon as a national benefactor. Just
there, at the opening of the valley, a tablet has been
placed in the solid rock, with an appropriate inscription.
But that is not all. Hard by it is an institution
for the education of the poor of the canton, which is
called after his name; and a factory where the Linth
colony are at work, who were brought here and supported
while the great work was in progress on which
they were employed.

Whichever way the eye turns from this point of
observation, it finds something interesting or wonderful
on which to rest. We are now in the morning of
our tour in Switzerland, and have been assured again
and again that this is <i>mere</i> beauty, compared with
the glory that awaits us hereafter. But those mighty
mountains crowned with eternal snow, and piercing
the very skies with their sharp peaks, or supporting the
heavens with their broad white shoulders, are
certainly most majestic works of God, and what more
and greater there can be, it is beyond imagination to
conceive. Not many travellers climb up here. They
are in such haste to see the Rigi and the Passes, and
the Vale of Chamouni, that they do not give a day to
Zurich, the most classic and picturesque of any of the
cantons of Switzerland. An English gentleman and
lady are up here with me, who have just been
traversing this whole country on foot. They are full
of delight with the view, though they have seen
everything else that is to be seen.

The only incident to give variety to our return was
losing the way, and making the walk a mile longer;
but that was of small account to Swiss pedestrians,
ambitious of doing great things, and making nothing
of climbing a mountain, and coming down before
dinner.

We are at Zurich now. Mr. <i>Baur</i> has the most
elegant “Hotel and Pension” on the verge of the
Lake of Zurich, that I have seen in Europe. He
calls this, as well as the Hotel in front of the Post
Office, after his own name, and gives them a degree
of personal attention unequalled by any landlord into
whose hands it was ever my pleasure to fall. In
most of the hotels in Europe, the proprietor keeps
himself out of sight, and trusts the entire management
of affairs to his assistants, the head waiter being the
most of a man you are ever able to find. Mr. Baur
is everywhere at once: receives his guests on their
arrival, makes himself acquainted with their wants,
and sees that they are attended to without fail. His
new house on the lake with a charming garden
in front, is one of the most delightful places for
a weary traveller to rest in for a few days.

There are many routes to the Rigi. Of course we
went by the best. Every traveller does; at least he
thinks so, and that often amounts to the same thing.
But in this as in every other road up hill in life, before
a man gets half way up, he wishes he had taken
the other. So it matters little, if he only reaches the
top at last. The steamboat on the Zurigsee, leaves at
eight in the morning, and at least a hundred passengers
crowded the little thing, when with a lovely
breeze and a fine clear day we were off for the Rigi.

The glory of the Rigi is at sunset and sunrise, and
then there is none unless the sky is clear. Nor are
you sure of a clear sky up there, if it were ever
so bright when you left the base. The group of
mountains known by the name of Rigi, of which the
highest peak is alone the object of interest to the
traveller, stand so isolated by the lakes of Zug and
Lucerne from the rest of the ridges and ranges, that
the view from the summit, especially at the close of
the day and at sunrise, is unequalled. It stands up
there alone, as an observatory from which to see the
others. An hour on the boat brought us to the village
of Horgen, where we were carried by stages across
the country to Zug, on a lake of the same name. At
Horgen about sixty passengers were landed, and we
found that our tickets had been numbered as they
were given to us on board the boat, and we were to
be seated in the coaches accordingly. My number
was forty-seven, very near the end of the list, but it
turned up a very good seat, on the shady side of the
stage, a very important matter in the middle of a hot
day for a ride of three hours. Not a winding but
very much of a zig-zag road, led us over the hill
country that divides the lakes. Sometimes we had
delightful views, deep ravines through which the
mountain streams were finding their way; on the
crest, the Rigi and Pilatus first meet the eye, and
then rapidly we make our way to the borders of the
lake, on which stands the little town of Zug, the capital
of the Canton of that name, the least among the
tribes. After a hasty dinner at the tavern we embarked
on another steamboat, and still smaller than
the one on the Zurich Lake. What a lovely sheet of
water is this Lake Zug! It lies eighteen hundred
feet higher than the sea; and all around it except at the
head, the richly cultivated shores are sloping away
from the water’s edge. But just before us, as we
are going South, the noble Rigi rises from the shore
of the Lake, and in the clear water the whole of that
vast mountain clothed with verdure to the very summit
is reflected so perfectly, that instead of looking
up to study the ridges and precipices and forests and
flocks on its rugged sides, it is pleasanter to study it
as it lies there in the depths of this pellucid sea. We
reached the South end, or head of the lake about
three in the afternoon, and here we arranged to
ascend the mountain.

The ascent from Arth is made by many, but it is
far better to push on through the village to Goldau,
and there look at the evidences of the awful work of
ruin and death that was wrought in 1806 by the
slide of a large part of the Rossberg mountain;
burying 450 human beings in one living grave.
There is the fresh white side of the mountain, as if
the half of it had fallen away yesterday. It is
5000 feet high; and lies in great strata of pudding
stone, which is very liable to be split asunder by the
water that filters between the layers. You can see
the ranges in the strata as the sun falls on this bare
side, and it seems as if what was left lying there,
might one of these days come down to find the half
that left it fifty years ago. Then a portion three
miles long and a thousand feet broad and at least a
hundred feet thick broke away from the rest, after a
long succession of heavy rains; and came down into
the valley, teeming with a population of happy
peasantry, and overwhelmed them with the most
awful deluge of modern times. So sudden was the
rush of rocks and earth, that a party of travellers
going up the Rigi, where I ascended, were met by
the torrent; seven had passed on 200 yards ahead of
the other four and were caught by the descending
avalanche, and never seen again. The valley is now
covered with vast rocks and masses of the conglomerate,
which then came down, and with so much
force that some of them now lie scattered some
distance up the hill on the other side of the vale!
Fifty years have not restored the valley to its former
fertility and beauty. One of its lakes was nearly
filled up, and now little pools are seen where once
was the bed of a handsome sheet of water. The
stories told of individual cases of suffering, of whole
families perishing, and what is on some accounts
more distressing, of some being taken and others
left, are so many that I will not attempt to repeat
them now. I walked into the beautiful little church
at Goldau, a gem, and on each side of the front door
is a black slab with a record of names of some of
those who perished in that dreadful day. This is a
Roman Catholic Canton, as I had evidence presently.

A new scene opens on the eye of the traveller
when for the first time he arrives at the foot of
a mountain with a large party, and prepares to
ascend. We led off on foot from Arth to Goldau,
supposing that the fifty or more from the boat would
strike up the hill immediately. But they followed
us: some with guides, some without: some carrying
their own packs, others with a servant to help them:
some were ladies ready to foot it to the summit:
some were to be carried in a chair on a bier by four
bearers: the lame and the lazy are expected to ride
on horses. I was in the former class to-day, recovered
from my Utleberg tramp, and was glad to have
good company to keep me in countenance, for I was
a little ashamed of myself in taking a horse when so
many, and some of them ladies, were going up on
foot.

The path for a mile is gently ascending, and then
takes a shaded gorge in the hills, and on this account
is greatly to be preferred to those paths which lead
from Arth and Weggis, around the mountain, exposing
the pilgrim all the way, to the rays of the sun.
Now we are mounting steadily: turning frequently
in the saddle to look at the constantly enlarging and
ennobling view. Now and then a little cascade
diversifies the hour: or we stop to refresh ourselves
from the many rills that are gurgling by the path.
The noise of running streams and waterfalls is
constantly heard, and on the stillness of the air the
tintinabula or tinkling of the bells on the necks of
the dun-colored cows, that are feeding in numerous
herds all up the sides of the mountain, comes gently
to the ear as soft music.

All along up the mountain are small sheds, called
chapels or stations, with some rude image of the
Saviour in it, and pilgrims, to whom indulgences
were promised by the Pope in the seventeenth
century, are going from one to the other stopping at
each and saying their prayers. I dismounted and
entered one; where the most hideous sight met my
eye which I have yet seen in the miserable Romish
worship. A full life size figure of Christ sinking to
the earth beneath the weight of the cross is carved
in wood; the countenance indicating agony, but
such a horrid face to personate the Saviour! and a
wig on his head of long dirty hair hanging over his
shoulders! It was sickening, and I was glad to
hasten away from it, as rapidly as possible.

These praying stations, thirteen in number, lead on
to a neat church called “Mary of the Snow,” and
around it are lodging-houses for pilgrims who are
very numerous in the month of August. A small
convent is here, where four or five monks of the Capuchin
order reside; they do service in the church,
and among the mountains where their priestly aid is
required. These lodging-houses are sometimes resorted
to by invalids for the benefit of the mountain
air, and the whey of goat’s milk, which can be had
in great abundance here. Beggars beset your path
from the valley to the mountain top: old men and
old women, young men and young women, and little
children trained to toddle into the road and put out
their hand before they can speak so as to be understood.
Many of these are not in want; but every
bit of money that can be extracted from travellers is
clear gain.

The steepest of the ascent is over, long before you
reach the summit, and the last mile of winding way
is a very easy and pleasant ride. The change of atmosphere
is great; and an overcoat is needed at
once, if you are warm with walking. Fortunately
you have had no chance to get the view for some
time, till it bursts upon you all at once as you plant
your feet on the mountain top, on a piece of table-land,
of half an acre, that forms a magnificent platform
from which to behold this scene. More than
two hundred people are there before us: most of
them parties travelling for pleasure from all parts of
the civilized world, with guides, couriers and servants,
a singular group to find yourself among so suddenly
and so far above the level of “the world and
the rest of mankind.” One large hotel, and one
small one are to shelter this company for the night,
and we are so fortunate as to find that we are to have
a small room with three beds, just under the roof,
with holes about the size of a hat to admit light and
air! That is better than none, and some of these
people will have none. Still the two hotels on the
summit, and one half an hour down, the Rigi Staffel,
afford abundant accommodations to company, unless
as in the present instance, the weather has been bad
for a week, and hundreds have been waiting for a
fair day, and the promise of a good night above. The
Album of the house in which visitors register their
names records the disappointment of many who have
climbed up to see nothing but that mysterious mist
which so often shrouds the mountain tops. Probably
the greater part of visitors are thus mocked, for it is
cloudy up here more than half the time. One party
thus groans:

.nf b
“Seven weary up-hill leagues we sped,
  The setting sun to see;
Sullen and grim he went to bed,
  Sullen and grim went we.
Nine sleepless hours of night we passed
  The rising sun to see,
Sullen and grim he rose again,
  Sullen and grim rose we.”
.nf-

Not such was our fate. The sun was half an hour
high when we reached the highest peak; and the first
Alpine panorama was around us. Other views had
been partial: this was a great circle of the heavens
and the earth, three hundred miles in circumference!
A few clouds in the western sky were gorgeously
crimson in the declining sun, but the atmosphere
was clear enough to reveal every mountain, every
lake, every village, city, forest and plain, with the
cottages innumerable, dotting the valleys. At our
feet the Lakes of Lucerne and Zug are apparently
underneath the mountain, and they stretch themselves
so curiously among the hills, that we can
scarcely determine to what sheets of water they
belong, or whether they are new lakes and not those
seen before. And away at a distance are other
waters, some of them very small, but giving beauty
and variety to the plains below. The villages lying
close by have their historic interest. All this region
is William Tell’s. His name is associated with many
a spot on which the eye is resting. A neat little
chapel is built to mark the place where he shot his
oppressor Gessler. Here at the right is the Lake and
town of Zug, and just behind it, rises the spire of the
church of Cappel, where Zwingle fell on the field of
battle. But turning from the views at the West and
North, and looking to the South and East, and such
a prospect of Alps on Alps is seen as no one had
believed could be piled into sight from a single
point. The Bernese Alps clothed in perpetual robes
of snow; those of Unterwalden and Uri, with the
dull blue glaciers in the midst of them; sending up
the peaks of Jungfrau, the Titlis, Rothstock and Bristenstock,
are directly in front, and on to the
Eastward, is the broad white head of the Dodi, the
Sentis and the Glarish; but these are a few
only of the many named and unnamed that are
now reflecting the sunset from their white crowns,
or retiring into the shades of evening as the
sun goes down. We look to the South East into an
opening called the Muotta Thal, where Suwarrow and
Massena with their hostile armies fought bloody battles
in the midst of fearful crags and precipices, and
we wonder that this land of mountains and ice has
been selected as the scene for so much warfare and
blood. The sun was now sinking to the edge of the
horizon. A lady standing near me said, “It is fit to
light such a scene as this!” There was a fitness
between the sun and the scene that was truly
striking and glorious. The hum of the hundred
voices was hushed. It was also fit that we should
be still while the sun took his last look of our world
that night.

It is for a wonder to me that Switzerland has produced
so few poets, but not strange that some of the
noblest strains of English poetry have been penned
under the inspiration of these Alpine views. They
awaken a train of emotions so profoundly new,
and at the same time so elevating and sublime, that
the heart wishes to utter itself in the passionate language
of poetry rather than in the duller words of
prose. “These are thy works,” O God: before the
mountains were built, and before the hills, thou
wert here. Thou didst “prepare the heavens, the
earth, the fields, and the highest part of the dust of
the world.” Thou hast weighed the Alps in a
balance, and held these mountains in the hollow of
thy hand. They shall flow down at thy presence,
when thou comest to shake terribly the earth. They
stand now, because thou, Lord, dost hold them up,
for giants as they are, and touching thy heavens, they
still lean on thee.

During this half hour of observation on the summit
of the Rigi, we had been wrapped in our cloaks
to protect us from the cold. As soon as the sun was
gone, we were glad to go into the house, where a
table for a hundred guests was spread, with a hot
supper sufficient for half the number; and before ten
o’clock we were sound asleep. Those who could not
find beds spent the night in the dining hall, entertaining
themselves and disturbing the rest, but we were
so far above them that we heard nothing till the
blast of a wooden horn rung through the halls, informing
us that the sun would be up before us if we
did not hasten to meet him. We hurried on our
clothes, wrapped up warmly, and in a few moments
stood with our faces to the East, intently watching,
like worshippers of the Sun, the first signs of his
coming. One single peak was precisely between us
and the sun, and as the earliest tints of the morning
began to redden it, the appearance was not unlike
that of a kindling fire in the summit. The blaze
gathered around it, and seemed to shoot away into
the regions of ice and snow; and then far into the
clouds above, the bright hues of day were cast,
and the crowd stood still, anxious to enjoy the first
view of the emerging sun. The horn was blown
again by the trumpeter, a miserable mode of announcing
that the King was coming, as if he needed
a herald as he rode up the East in his chariot of gold
and fire. There was just haze enough in the atmosphere
to dim the sun of his dazzling brightness, and
we could look steadily on his face as he rose behind
the mountain, and seemed to pause on the summit,
and calmly to look down on the world he had left in
darkness a few hours before. Then peak after peak,
and mountain ridges, and domes and minarets, fields
of fresh snow, and forests of living green, began to
catch the morning tints: gorges in the hill sides
would lie there in deep shadow, and bosoms of virgin
snow, bared to the rising sun, would blush when he
looked in upon them, while villages and hamlets in
the vale below are still wrapped in the shades of the
gray dawn, and have not thought of waking yet to
begin another day. We spent an hour or two in the
enjoyment of this magnificent prospect, which we are
told is one of the most delightful we are to have in
Switzerland; and when the sun was fairly up to the
dwellers in the vale as well as to us on the mountain
top, we turned our backs upon him, took a cup of
coffee in the Rigi Culm, and bade farewell to the
most splendid of all the prospects we had ever seen,
or expect to see on earth. I am greatly moved in
the presence of Niagara; and there have formed
impressions of the active power and glory of the
great Creator, such as are conveyed by no other of
the works of God. But now I am looking on the
silent evidence of his creating might in a new and
wonderful form; and it seems to me but a short step
from those shining glaciers and snow-crowned
palaces to the central throne of Him who sitteth in
the circle of the heavens. “O Lord God of Hosts,
who is a strong Lord like unto thee? The heavens
are thine: the earth also is thine; as for the world
and the fulness thereof, thou hast founded them: the
north and the south thou hast created them; Tabor
and Hermon shall rejoice in thy name. Thou hast a
mighty arm; strong is thy hand, and high is thy
right hand.”

As we had ascended the Rigi from Goldau, on the
eastern side, we now went down on the western to
Weggis. We were in no haste: the day was before
us, and we had nothing to do but to walk till we
were tired, choose a shady spot commanding a fine
view of the lake of Lucerne and the surrounding
hills, and then rest and enjoy the scene. The bells
from the herds of cattle far below us, and sometimes
above us, and the strains of music from the villages
in the vales, would come floating to us on the
morning air, while nature with all her voices was
making one rich psalm. The descent is far less
fatiguing than climbing up, but when continued for
two or three hours it becomes exceedingly exhausting.
We provided ourselves with pike staffs having
a Chamois horn for a head, and with these we
resisted the too constant downward tendency, using
them as a drag to a wheel, and making the greatest
effort to hold back. On this path to or from the Rigi
is a boarding and bathing house, over a spring of
very clear cold water to which invalids resort; and
as walking on the mountain side for an hour or
so after bathing is part of the discipline, I have no
doubt that the establishment works many wonderful
cures. A chapel of the Holy Virgin is close by,
where prayers are daily said for the shepherds on the
precipices, whose lives are in constant danger while
they pursue the duties to which they are trained.
Half an hour below the chapel, the path leads
through a mighty archway formed by two huge
masses of rock supporting a third between them.
Some great convulsion of nature has thrown them
into this remarkable position, and they show in their
make the nature of all the upper strata of these hill
sides, which are in constant danger of sliding down
when the water works its way under them, and
separates them from the lower. Here we sat down
and refreshed ourselves: a cool breeze rushing
through the passage, and making a delightful resting
place for weary travellers.

I said it was easier far to go down than up. So it
is, but one who carries much weight, or who has not
considerable powers of endurance should be cautious
of making the experiment. A very heavy gentleman
who came to the foot of the mountain with us yesterday,
and rode up, with his son, a fine lad of fourteen,
running along by the side of the horse, attempted to
come down on foot. We overtook him; and just
then he lay down on the grass by the side of a
beautiful spring of water: he was exhausted, and had
sent his son down for help. Presently the faithful
and noble boy came running up the mountain with a
bottle of wine and a loaf of bread, and soon four
stout men with a chair, whom the lad had outstripped,
came on, and the heavy gentleman was
carried by hand the rest of the way. I met them
afterwards at the foot of the hill, and congratulated
the father on his safe arrival; and more on being the
father of such a boy.



.sp 4
.h2 id=ch04
CHAPTER IV.||LUCERNE AND THE LAND OF TELL.

.in +3
.ti -3
The Lake—Avalanches—Pontius Pilate—Lucerne—Dance of Death—Fishing—Storm
on the Lake—Ramble among the Peasantry—Two Dwarfs—On the
Lake—Rifle Shooting—Chapel of William Tell—Scenes in his Life—Altorf—Hay-Making—a
Great Day.
.in
.sp 2


.di i_b_054.jpg 100 170 1.0
In the Hotel de la <i>Concorde</i>, the
“house of peace,” I found a pleasant
chamber on the edge of the Lake of
Lucerne; and so near that in its lucid
waters I can from my window see the
large fish chasing and devouring the
little ones, just as big fish on land are
doing everywhere. In front, the lofty
Pilatus rises in heavy grandeur, and
the Buochsherhorn and Stauzerhorn are in full view,
with other peaks all white with snow, while it is
oppressively hot below. I spent the day here at the
foot of the mountain.

There is no life in this little settlement except when
the boat arrives with travellers for the Rigi: the
mountain comes down so suddenly to the shore
that there is hardly room for dwellings, and a
few inhabitants only are scattered along on the
water’s edge. But it is on the shore of the most
enchanting lake in Europe, and at a point where
some of the finest views of this lake are to be had.
We sat on the bank to see the sun set, a sight of
which one never tires; hundreds of travellers have
passed up or down the Rigi to-day, and of that whole
number we are the only two who have cared to rest
here to study and admire the scenery, and at the
same time refresh ourselves for future pilgrimages.

There was a crash among the mountains just now:
at first we thought it the noise of a steamboat on the
lake, but the roar became quickly greater, and we
knew that it was an avalanche of ice or of rocks that
had come down the side of old Pilatus. It was the
first that we had heard, and were very willing that
the quiet of our evening should be thus disturbed.
Then as if nothing were to be wanting to make the
enjoyment of this scene perfect, the clouds marshaled
themselves about the Buochsherhorn and
played off their lightnings around his head; while
torrents of rain came down on the lake below us,
and the snow fell in sheets on the loftier mountains
in the South. This lake is subject to sudden visitations
of storms, and is therefore dangerous for skiffs
unless under the guidance of the native boatmen,
who know the signs of the weather, and put in for
shore when they apprehend the approach of a
gale. The hoary mountain <i>Pilatus</i> is said to
have derived its name from Pontius Pilate, who was
driven away from Rome, became a wretched wanderer
here in this wild land, and finally in the
horrors of a guilty conscience plunged from one of
the crags of this mountain into the lake and perished.
From its peculiar position and great height, 7,000 feet
above the sea, and the foremost in the Alpine chain at
the North, the clouds delight to gather about it, and
so many are the storms which come down from this
point, the superstitious dwellers on the shores for a
long time supposed that poor Pilate was at the
bottom of them all, and the lake would never be safe
till his troubled spirit was put to rest.

From the summit of the Rigi, the seven towers of
Lucerne had caught my eye, but they and the city
they overlook and defend, appeared more beautiful
and exceedingly picturesque as I approached them by
water from Weggis. The old wall, of which the
gates and towers are still remaining, surrounds the
land side of the town, which stands on a side hill
rising gradually from the water; and all outside of
the wall the hill is dotted with handsome dwellings
embosomed in orchards and rich meadow lands; a
picture of quiet beauty and a spot for classic repose
that a weary man might almost be pardoned for
coveting. The town itself has no pretensions to taste
in its architecture, but for beauty of situation on the
most attractive of all the Swiss lakes, it is without a
rival. The hotels are on the borders of the lake at
the very landing, and the lofty Pilatus on the right,
the Rigi on the left, and the far loftier and more
majestic heights of the Alps in the cantons of Schwytz
and Uri are lying in full view of the <i>Swan</i> Hotel, where
I lodged, a capital house, which I cordially commend.

We have been exploring the town to find what of
interest may be in it, though it is scarcely worth while
for any man to look down for a moment while he is
in Switzerland, unless he is on the top of a hill. But
Lucerne has one peculiar feature of interest, in its
covered bridges adorned with curious paintings. In
Berlin a gallery for the fine arts was opened over a
stable, and some poet ridiculed the idea by suggesting
the inscription “Musis et mulis,” to the Muses
and mules; but the Lucerne people had the singular
fancy of making their bridges over the River Reuss,
which divides their town in two, the repository of
paintings, some of them possessed of no artistic merit,
and all of them more or less injured now by the
weather. The bridges are roofed, and under the roof,
about ten feet apart, these pictures in triangular
frames are fastened up, so that the foot passenger,
(no carriages are allowed,) may study them as he
walks along. One series illustrates scenes in Swiss
history—another on the reverse of the same canvass,
the exploits of the patron saints of the town. These
are on the Kapell-Bridge which starts near the Swan
Hotel, and runs across the very rapid river Reuss,
which here emerges from the lake. The Mill-bridge,
lower down the river, has a very rude imitation of
the paintings of the “Dance of Death,” a series of
pictures that are so often attempted, we may be sure
they once had power on the minds of men. The originals
are destroyed with the exception of the few
fragments at Basle. The doggerel verse into which
the German text is translated, is about equal in
artistic excellence to the painting. The most remarkable
bridge which Lucerne once boasted was across
the end of the lake, but it has now been removed, the
waters crowded back by the hand of art, and the
large hotels now stand on the site of the old Hof-Bruche.

In the arsenal is a sacred deposit of old armor, and
relics of more than doubtful authenticity, including
the sword of William Tell, and the battle-axe which
it is said the Reformer Zwingle carried in his hand on
the field where he fell. A stranger may look at these
and a hundred other curiosities, with some interest,
if he has not been already surfeited, as I am, with the
same sort of thing.

.il id=i02 fn=i_b_059.jpg w=500
.ca THE MONUMENT AT LUCERNE.

They have one lion here that <i>is</i> a lion—one of the
noblest monuments and magnificent designs that I
have seen in Europe. We passed through the Weggis
Gate, and by a shaded pleasant walk in the private
grounds of General Pfyffer, came to a lonely,
lovely dell. On one side of it a huge precipice presents
a bare rock face from which the water trickles
into a little lake at the base. This rock is fringed on
the sides and over the brow with shrubbery and trees,
a graceful drapery, and in the solid side of the rock
the figure of a dying lion is carved out of the same
stone. A broken spear sticks in his side, and the
blood oozes from the wound. The agony of death is
in his face, but his paw rests on a shield with the arms
of France, which even in death he is determined to
defend. This monument was designed by the great
Thorwalsden, but was executed by Ahorn, a sculptor
of Constance, to commemorate the bravery of the
Swiss guards who were slain at Paris while defending
the Bourbons in the Revolution of 1792. This lion is
nearly thirty feet long, and in just proportions,
making an impressive monument better than the deed
deserves. A representative of the Swiss guard wearing
his uniform, is present to expound the design to
those who are not quick at finding “sermons in
stones.”

A cool delightful walk of fifteen minutes from this
sequestered spot brought us into the grounds of a little
convent, pleasingly situated on the sloping banks, and
among cultivated fields, now fragrant with new-mown
hay. An aged priest came by, and taking off his hat
politely saluted us as we passed. We paused at the
door of the chapel; a single lamp was burning before
the altar, and one lonely nun was on her knees performing
her evening devotions. It was not in our
hearts to disturb the calm current of her thoughts, as
she was gazing on the picture of her Saviour, and we
did not enter. So sweetly and gracefully did the
villas lie among the green fields and fruit trees, with
the lake in front of them and the snowy Alps on the
other side of it, full in view, but far enough to be in
another clime, that I felt very much like setting up a
little convent there on a new plan, and sending over
the sea, for the community to people it.

.sp 2

<i>Aug. 24.</i>—We had a storm on the Lake this evening.
For two or three days the weather had been
very hot, so much so that I was not disposed to go
tramping, even for the sake of climbing up a hill into
a colder atmosphere. We had been lying off, too
lazy to write, or to read. So we went a fishing after
dinner. The Apostles went fishing. They fished all
night, and caught nothing: we fished all the afternoon
and had the same success.

Just before nightfall, the wind began to blow all
of a sudden as if it had broken out in a new place.
It blew all ways at once. The little skiffs that were
out on the Lake pulled in for shore with all haste;
and in less time than I have taken to tell of it, the
scene of calm beauty which the Lake had presented,
was changed to that of an angry tempest-tossed sea.
The whole valley was filled with black, fierce clouds.
Rigi was clothed with thunder. Pilatus was totally
obscured. The storm was coming from his quarter,
confirming the superstition of the natives, that his
troubled spirit stirs the tempest. Through a single
break in the clouds I could see the sunshine playing
among the valleys away to the south, while darkness
and gloom were all around us. The contrast was
striking and peculiar to this region, where the sudden
elevation of the mountains makes the transitions from
one temperature to another rapid. On the bosom of
the Lake the reflections of the clouds were exceedingly
curious, giving almost as many colors as the
rainbow that now began to appear on the Rigi. It
was a beautiful bow. No rain had yet fallen here; but
there on the side of that noble mountain on whose
summit I had spent the night, the blessed bow was
resting; so pure, so glorious, so full of sweet suggestions
of God’s promise, that I looked on it as on the
face of a friend in a strange land. It is just such a bow
as they have in America. The same sun and the same
showers make it, and the same God hangs it out
there, the sign of his faithfulness, the token of his
love. Who can be afraid of a storm when the rainbow
appears? But it faded, as all bright things fade,
and the dark clouds grew darker, and a heavy clap
of thunder in the west shook the Alps, and another:
not preceded by a streak of chain lightning leaping
like a red serpent in the clouds, but by a broad lurid
sheet of fire, filling the atmosphere, and then suddenly
vanishing into darkness. The rain now came
down in sheets; the wind blew with increasing power,
and for a few moments it did indeed appear as if the
prince of the powers of the air had been suffered to
reign, and he was doing his worst while he was left
unchained. The ignorance of the people could
readily be imposed upon, when such scenes as this
are frequent; and I am told, in former times so
strictly was the ascent of Mount Pilatus forbidden,
lest a storm should be provoked by the intrusion, that
a Naturalist, Gessner, had to obtain a special license
to pursue his investigations there.

The storm was of short duration. The hundreds,
induced by the clear bright morning to go to the
summit of Rigi for a sunset and a sunrise, found it
was not the entertainment to which they were
invited. In full view from my window, though five
hours distant, I can see where the clouds cap his
head, the rain is pouring there in torrents, the
western and eastern sky is enveloped in mists that
obscure all view of the sun, and more than half of
the time, there is as little to be seen from the summit
of Rigi, as in a cellar. The sun is shining brightly
now on the lake near me, and a great fleece, as if a
thousand flocks had yielded theirs for a robe, is thrown
over the crown of the mountain, making a veil that
no glass can see through.

The next morning we set off for a walk into the
country. The landlord of the Swan assured us it
would be a pleasant day, and as this prediction was
made at the risk of losing two guests in consequence,
we were bound to respect his judgment. We
resolved to make an expedition into the country
behind Lucerne, cross some of the spurs of the mountains,
come around by the foot of old Pilatus, and so
return to our lodgings. The whole walk would be
only about twelve or fifteen miles, and if we should
lose our way and make it a little longer, why so
much the better.

It was just eight in the morning as we left and
wandered slowly through the streets with our Alpen-stocks
or pike staffs in hand. We paused at a church
door or two, and looked in, where a few were paying
their silent devotions before the altar, with a single
burning lamp, and passing out of the gate underneath
one of the seven old feudal towers, we took the bank
of the river Reuss, and walked by a pleasant path,
expecting every moment to find a bridge, as our road
was to lead us off to the west, and we must cross the
stream to reach it. I asked a little girl, tending two
babies in a cottage door, if there was any bridge in
that direction, and her ready answer “Nein,” or <i>no</i>,
sent us about in a hurry. Here was the first mile
thrown away, and retracing our steps, we crossed at
the bridge near the wall, and taking the high road
toward Berne, were soon in the midst of rural Swiss
valley scenery. A path for a mile or more on the
bank of the river, shaded by a row of fine trees, led
along by the side of the carriage road, but we kept
the track, having little desire to miss it again.
Three miles of easy walking brought us past the
village of Lindau to a bridge over a deep and
frightful gorge, through which a mountain stream is
rushing, fifty or sixty feet below the bridge. Here it
is compressed in one place to a passage it has worn
for itself through the solid rock, and not more than
three feet wide, but the bed of the ravine gives
evidence that the torrent when swollen with melting
snows in early summer, or by heavy rains, may be
terrible, so that this massive bridge, though very
short, is required to resist its force. The sides of
this ravine were so precipitous that we did not
attempt the descent: but finding a path up the
mountain, and learning from a peasant whom we met
that it would take us over into a vale, we struck into
it, and climbed. The roots of trees in some places
made a flight of steps up which we walked, and all
the way it was so steep that to get on required
resolution and wind. But the ascent though sharp
was very short, and in a few minutes we reached a
well made winding way, that led us into a lovely
vale. Thirsty if not weary, we called at the door of
a little dwelling and asked for milk. The farmer
and his wife were sitting on wooden benches by a
table, taking their meal; what meal it was we could
not determine, as it was ten o’clock in the morning;
too late for breakfast, too early for dinner. They
had an earthen pot of weak coffee or something of
the same color, and pieces of brown bread which
they dipped in and ate, taking a drink of the fluid
now and then, and apparently enjoying their frugal
meal. The old woman gave me a “Yah” in answer
to my request for milk, and taking a glass tumbler
from a closet, she wiped the dust out of it with her
fingers, and going into a dark room, the dairy likely,
she brought me a draught of as sweet milk as ever
wet the lips of man or boy. The cottage was not
clean, I am sorry to say it. I looked up a flight of
stairs, and the appearance of things there did not
suggest to me the idea of taking lodgings, but giving
the woman a bit of silver for which she thanked me
in German, we walked on, refreshed with the milk
and the moment’s rest while getting it.

A little farther on, and a fine mansion with castellated
towers, stood on the rising hill commanding a
wide prospect of mountain scenery, but the road did
not lead us near to it. Perhaps the proprietor of the
valley has his home up there, and the tenants below
may not be thriving: certainly it looks as if wealth,
state, comfort, and elegance were in those old halls
and having had milk in the cottage, I presume we
might have wine in the mansion.

We soon lost sight of every sign of a dwelling, and
walked on through a pine forest, the saddest of all
forests to tread in: the sighing of the air through the
tree tops making a music “mournful to the soul.” A
water course, in hollowed logs carried through the
woods, led on to a mill by the way-side, into which
we entered to see a novel operation, and as queer a
little miller as any body ever saw. The water turned
an overshot wheel outside of the mill, and this turned
two large wooden cog wheels, which raised two
beams and let them fall, up and down, upon pine
bark, which was thus pounded up fine enough to be
used for tanning. But the miller who fed the mill
with the bark was a man dwarf about three feet high,
well enough proportioned, a stout healthy fellow,
forty years old. He looked up and laughed us a
good morning, and went on with his work, which
made such a noise that it was useless to converse.
And just as we left the mill we met a woman not
more than three feet long, so nearly the same age and
size, we could not but think they might be another
remarkable pair of twins, who would have made the
fortune of any body bringing them to America for
exhibition.

We were now in a manufacturing valley. The fine
water power was improved to drive looms in a mill
where twenty girls were weaving, and when we
passed, which was at eleven o’clock, they all quit
for dinner, and trooped by us in rows of six abreast:
hearty looking girls with no hats on, their hair braided,
and hanging in two strips half way to their feet.
They seemed to be very happy among themselves, and
modest and well behaved as we walked along with
them for a while. Other establishments for working
iron were in the same neighborhood, and a village
called <i>Kriens</i>, had some beautiful houses in it—one
of them with twelve windows in a row in front, and
three stories high, a fine mansion; and all of them
were surrounded with flower gardens, tended with
care, and glowing with splendid dahlias, and other
flowers. The best houses I have yet seen in Switzerland
are covered instead of clapboards, with small,
round-end shingles, put on so neatly as to look like
scollop shell work. So we walked from one to another
hamlet, studying life in these secluded places,
where the habits of the people are quite as unsophisticated
as if they had never been a mile from home—the
children did not know of such a place as Lucerne,
though not five miles off—but there was peace, order,
thrift, and contentment—the mountains rise suddenly
from behind their dwellings, and shelter them from
the winds, and God watches them in the winter when
the deep snow fills this vale, and they are as contented
as if they knew that people live on the other side of
the hills. Some of the cottages were beautifully covered
with grape vines, trained between the windows,
and giving them an appearance of luxurious growth,
that might be adopted in our country far more than
it is. The vine thus cultivated occupies no space that
could otherwise be used, and is an ornament and protection,
while it yields delicious and abundant fruit.

Our walk this morning of five hours brought us
through this valley and back to Lucerne by one
o’clock, and if there had been any good reason for it,
we could have done a dozen miles more toward night.
We had been brought more immediately into contact
with the country people, and saw more of their way
of life, than we would in a month of travel on the
thoroughfares. None of the places we visited are
even named in the guide books, and we thus had the
pleasure of breaking out of the beaten path, and finding
one that was new and interesting.

.sp 2

<i>Lake of the Four Forest Cantons.</i>

Lake Lucerne is called the Lake of the Four Forest
Cantons, a longer but a very appropriate name, as its
shores are washed by four and only four of the Cantons
of Switzerland—Lucerne, Uri, Unterwalden, and
Schwytz. Above all the lakes of the country, and
perhaps of the world, it is distinguished for the majesty
of its scenery and the grandeur of its historical
associations.

Speaking of the classic history of the lake and
mountains around it, Sir James McIntosh says:


.in +2
.ll -2
“It is upon this that the superiority of the lake of
Lucerne to all other lakes, or as far as I know, to
all other scenes upon earth, depends. The vast
mountains rising on every side, and closing at the
end, with their rich clothing of wood, the soft spots
of verdant pasture scattered at their feet, and sometimes
on their breast, and the expanse of water
unbroken by islands, and almost undisturbed by any
signs of living men, make an impression which it
would be foolish to attempt to convey by words.
The only memorials which would not disgrace such a
scene as those of past ages renowned for heroism and
virtue, and no part of the world is more full of such
venerable ones.”
.ll
.in

The shores of this lake are the scenes of William
Tell’s illustrious deeds, and the theatre also of
modern deeds of valor not surpassed by those of
ancient times. It was the contemplation of the
moral as well as the physical sublime in this region,
that led the same elegant author to write:

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“The combination of whatever is grandest in
nature, with whatever is pure and sublime in human
conduct, affected me more powerfully in the passage
of this lake, than any scene which I had ever seen.
Perhaps neither Greece nor Rome would have had
such power over me. They are dead. The present
inhabitants are a new race who regard with little or
no feeling the memorials of former ages. This is
perhaps the only place in our globe where deeds of
pure virtue, ancient enough to be venerable, are
consecrated by the religion of the people, and
continue to command interest and reverence. No
local superstition so beautiful and so moral anywhere
exists. The inhabitants of Thermopylae or Marathon
know no more of those famous spots than
that they are so many square feet of earth. England
is too extensive a country to make Runnymede an
object of national affection. In countries of industry
and wealth the stream of events sweeps away these
old remembrances. The solitude of the Alps is a
sanctuary destined for the monuments of ancient
virtue; Grutli and Tell’s chapel are as much reverenced
by the Alpine peasants as Mecca by a devout
Musselman; and the deputies of the three ancient
cantons met, so late as 1715, to renew their
allegiance and their oaths of eternal union.”
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Filled with such emotions as these and fresh from
the perusal of these fine passages I left Lucerne on a
lovely morning in August, the atmosphere pleasantly
cooled by the previous storms, and now a glorious
cloudless sky hanging over this mountain sea. On
a little island, and strange to say the only island in
the lake, a monument of wood once stood to the
memory of William Tell, but it was struck by
lightning and has disappeared. Near it the bay of
Kussnacht sets up, where is a chapel to mark the
spot on which the arrow from Tell’s unerring bow
drank the heart’s blood of his enemy and tyrant
Gessler; and a ruined castle said to have been
the prison to which Tell was destined when he made
his memorable escape of which we shall soon speak.
But the boat put up into another bay on the other
side under old Pilatus and landed passengers who
were taken into the small boats which ply continually
among these bays, and distribute the passengers
at the several points from which they would make
their excursions into the country. Pilatus rises in
gloomy grandeur from the very shores of the water,
and its bifurcated peak soon is lost sight of, while but
one presents itself. Rugged, barren and uninviting
as it is, there are those who yet make the ascent, and
from this landing, though the ascent is far more
difficult, and the view from the summit far less
satisfactory than the Rigi.

We now returned to Kussnacht bay; and if the
great shooting match which occurred last Monday
had been coming off to-day, we would go ashore to
see it. Once a year the marksmen of the canton
assemble for a trial of their skill with the rifle, and
there is also an annual festival, when the best from
all the cantons assemble for the federal shooting
match. With music and banners and processions,
with garlands and arches of victory and feasting and
drinking, they keep up this custom from generation
to generation; and the riflemen of the Swiss and
Tyrol mountains, like their ancestors of the bow, have
no rival. The military displays were very miserable.
Having just come from France, Prussia, and Austria,
where the army was evidently the pet of governments,
and the curse of the people, I was pleased to see
that the Swiss had no need of armies, and the military
procession was sorry enough. But the music was
stirring, and the Swiss feel it a part and parcel of
their patrimonial inheritance, to be roused by its
strains to noble deeds, or melted to tenderness by its
subduing power. The lake had assumed to the eye,
when looking down upon it from one slope of the
Rigi, the form of an X, and now the two promontories
that divide it come within a mile of each other,
and are called the Noses, which we pass, and enter
the bay of Brochs, where the Horn of that name and
Stawzer rear their lofty heads. We touched at
Bechenried, and then swept the width of the lake
again to <i>Gersau</i>, a little cluster of houses at the foot
of a gently-receding hill, one of the most remarkable
spots of land in the whole world, in the fact that for
four hundred years the people of this village, shut out
from the rest of mankind by these mighty ramparts
of mountains, and having but three miles long and
two wide of territory, maintained an independent
democratic government of their own. The French
invasion of 1798 destroyed their freedom by uniting
them to the Canton Schwytz. The mountain-side is
covered with orchards, in the midst of which neat
cottages nestle sweetly. All the land they have has
been washed down from the mountains, and it would
not be strange if trees and cottages and people should
one day be washed into the lake together. Such a
calamity would carry off the old gallows, still
standing, but which the government had no occasion
to use during its independent existence. Here the
scenery of the lake becomes in the highest degree
sublime. We stop for a moment at Brunnen, where
goods are deposited that are to go over the Alps by
St. Gothard into Italy, and on one of the warehouses
you see three men painted in bold colors, and their
names affixed, the heroes who with Tell achieved the
deliverance of Switzerland in 1315. On this spot the
alliance was formed between the three cantons of
Uri, Unterwalden and Schwytz. Now the vast mountains
rise more perpendicularly from the lake: a solitary
rock stands a few feet from the shore on the
promontory opposite, and passing it we seem to be
issuing into a new lake altogether. Away on the
ledges, or table land on the heights, stands a little
church, and a few dwellings are scattered around, but
we lose sight of them, and are now in the midst of a
solitude of water, mountain, snow and sky, the grandeur
and sublimity of which it is equally impossible
for me to exaggerate or describe. No road, not even
a footpath can be made along the base of these rocky
mountains that literally stand in the water, and thence
rear their heads so far into the upper air that the
fields of snow lie there in full view, forever whitening
in the sun. A little recession from the shore gives
lodgment for soil enough to make a secluded bosom
in the hills; and this <i>oasis</i> is a sacred spot in
Swiss history, for here in the dead of night, the three
confederates met to form their plans to deliver their
country from the Austrian yoke. This is Grutli, and
every American who passes the spot will feel a sympathetic
thrill of joy to look on the birth-place of a
country’s freedom. Nearly opposite to Grutli, the
steamboat slackens its speed, and moves slowly and
solemnly by a small chapel, with an open front, and
filled with rude paintings of scenes in Swiss history.
This chapel is to commemorate the spot where Tell
leaped ashore from the boat in which the tyrant Gessler
was conveying him from Altorf to his dungeon in
Kussnacht. A storm came up with such fury that
Gessler, being frightened, and his oarsmen failing,
ordered the chains to be taken off from Tell, that he
might guide the skiff ashore. He ran it to this rock,
leaped ashore, and made his escape. Before the
despot reached his castle, Tell had waylaid him and
sent an arrow to his heart. This chapel was “built
in 1388, by the Canton of Uri, only thirty-one years
after Tell’s death, and in the presence of one hundred
and fourteen persons who had known the hero. Once
a year, mass is said, and a sermon preached in the
chapel to the inhabitants of these borders, who
repair hither in boats, forming an aquatic procession.”

We were at the head of the lake in a few minutes.
I was willing that it should be extended
for hours, but the little village of Fluellen was
reached, and here we go ashore. The village stands in
a marsh, which is formed at the entrance of the river
Reuss into the lake, and in consequence the people
are subject to goitre and cretinism, those terrible
diseases so peculiar to this country. It is not desirable
to stay here any longer than is necessary to get
away; and there is nothing to attract the stranger.
We took the first carriage we found, and rode on to
<i>Altorf</i>. At the hotel two young women came out to
receive us, as men waiters would do in another country.
It was a novelty to be thus received, and giving
a hand to each of the damsels I was assisted from the
carriage and escorted into the house. One of them,
a fine-looking girl of eighteen, in a picturesque and
becoming dress, white spencer and short sleeves with
a dark skirt and bracelets, insisted on taking my
knapsack, which I declined giving up, and leaning
on my Alpen stock, I had so much of an argument
with her that the travellers formed a circle about us
and looked on. While dinner was preparing I
walked out to the open square in which that scene
was enacted which has been more famous than any
other in Swiss history. Here by this fountain was
the tree to which the son of William Tell was bound,
with the apple on his head, and at the other fountain
the father stood, to obey the infamous order of the
tyrant to shoot with his cross-bow the apple from the
head of his lovely boy. A statue of the father surmounts
the fountain. The old village has all the
signs of decay, and I found it difficult to believe that
here the crowd had gathered five hundred years ago
to behold that dreadful spectacle—here stood the
monster who had given the cruel order, here fell the
arrows from beneath the garment of Tell, which he
declared he designed for the tyrant if his arrow had
slain his son. I walked out of the village into the
narrow meadow under the brow of overhanging
mountains, and admired the industry that has terraced
the slopes and wrung all the support it would
yield from the soil. A row of targets was here, with
evidences that the people having long since laid aside
the cross bow, are now experts with the rifle: and as
this village is the capital of the canton of Uri, it is
the rallying place for those trials of skill in which
they take so much delight. The tree on which Gessler’s
hat was hung, with the command that the people
should bow down to it, stood here till 1567, when
it was removed and a stone erected in its place.

The valley of Schachen, which we enter on leaving
Altorf, delighted me with the beauty of its meadows,
in which the Swiss peasants were making hay under
a burning sun, while the mountains rising from the
edge of the fields were white with snow. The men
and women at noon when we passed were resting
from their toil, and lying around on the mown grass,
the very picture of slow and easy hay-makers. We
crossed a rapid stream foaming in its downward
course, in which William Tell was drowned while
nobly striving to save the life of a child; and a little
further on we passed the village in which he was
born. Thus in a single day which is not yet half
gone, we have seen the various spots in Switzerland
made classic by the deeds of William Tell and his
compatriots, and the places where that illustrious
though rustic hero was born, where he performed his
great exploits, and where he perished in the midst of
one not less noble than any other that sheds honor on
his name. It was a great day to have passed through
all these scenes, and I can say, without affectation
that my solitary walk in that ruined town of Altorf
moved me more than the contemplation of any battle
field in Europe.



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.h2 id=ch05
CHAPTER V.||PASS OF SAINT GOTHARD.


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The Priest’s Leap—The Devil’s Bridge—Night on the Mountains—Storm—Hospenthal—the
Glaciers—a Lady in Distress—the Furca Pass—Glacier of
the Rhone—Heinrich and Nature—Heinrich asks after God—Scene in the
Hospice.
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.di i_b_081.jpg 100 170 1.5
We are now on the great road
that leads over the Alps into
Italy by the famous Pass of
St. Gothard. The diligence to
Milan went off this morning
at nine o’clock, and had we
come on in the earliest boat
from Lucerne, we might have
been taken on as far as we
liked by that lumbering conveyance. A party of
students, seven from Germany, and two from Oxford
joined us, and we resolved to hire a carriage to
Amsteg, two hours onward, and there to begin the
ascent and pedestrianism together. The ride to
Amsteg was lively, but when we were set down at
that village, with a walk of five hours before us, all
the way up the mountains, I confess to a slight
sinking at the heart; and my courage oozed out
gradually at the end of my toes. At the inn of
Altorf, a young German student attracted me by the
gracefulness of his manner, the delicacy of his features,
and the pleasant expression with which he conversed.
He attached himself to our party, and we walked on
together, pilgrims to see Switzerland, and rejoicing
in the power to take leave of all modes of travelling,
but that first and best, which nature had provided.
The river Reuss comes dashing along down with the
fury of a young torrent, pouring over rocks, and
whirling around precipices with a madness that
brooks no control. The Bristenock mountain towers
aloft into the regions of snow and ice, and nature
begins to grow wild and dreary. The soft meadows
on which the maids of Uri were making hay have
disappeared, and the green pastures with frequent
herds are now the only hope of the shepherd. The
road is no longer a straight path, but in its toilsome
way upward, it crosses again and again this foaming
river, and bridges of solid masonry, built to resist the
flood when it bears the ruins of avalanches on its
bosom, and spreads them in the spring on the plains
below.

We crossed the third bridge and came to a gorge
of frightful depth through which the river rages
furiously, in a maddened torrent too fearful to look
on without awe. It is called Pfaffensprung, or the
Priest’s Leap, from a story—which no one will
believe who stands here—that a monk once leaped
across the chasm with a maiden in his arms. I have
no doubt a monk would do his best under the
circumstances, but I doubt the possibility of his
clearing thirty feet at a bound over such an abyss as
this, even for the sake of the prize he is said
to have carried off. We had been beset by beggars
under all sorts of guises, and here a miserable old
woman—alas that a woman could come to this—appeared
with a huge stone in her hands, which she
hurled into the deeps, for us to see it leap from rock
to rock and finally sink into the raging waters far
below. A few cents she expected for this service,
and she received them with gratitude; when an old
man, perhaps her husband, came on with another
rock which he was willing to drop for a similar consideration.
As I turned away from the scene, a
carriage came up in which an English gentleman was
riding, with two servants on the box. I walked by
the side of his carriage and fell into conversation,
when he very politely invited me to ride with him.
I declined of course, and told him that I was making
a pedestrian tour, and designed to walk to Andermatt,
three hours and a half farther up the mountain.
“I spend the night there also,” he said, “and I will
esteem it an honor, Sir, if you will take a seat in my
carriage.” Such an invitation, under the circumstances,
was not to be refused, and I took a seat by
the gentleman’s side. How wonderfully the scenery
improved, certainly how much my appreciation of it
increased, when I fell back on the cushions! My
companion was an accomplished member of the London
bar. He knew public men whom I had met, and
was well acquainted with all subjects of international
interest, so that in fifteen minutes we were comparing
minds on those questions in which England and
America are so much concerned. We stopped at the
little village of Wasen for refreshments. I insisted on
paying the reckoning, when he stopped me with this
remark, “Sir, you are my guest to-day: when I
meet you in America I shall be happy to be yours.”

We rode on and upward, the road now assuming
the character of a mighty structure of mason work
through a savage defile, only wide enough for the
carriage-path, and the torrent of the Reuss, which no
longer flows, but tumbles headlong from one cliff to
another, while for three or four miles the lofty precipices
hang fearfully on high. In the spring, the rage
of this mountain river, swollen by melting snows, and
bringing down ice and rocks in its thundering fall,
would tear away the foundations of any common
pathway, and this must be built to defy the fiercest
storm. Twenty-five or thirty thousand persons cross
the Alps by this route every year; and to secure this
travel, which would otherwise be carried off to the
other passes, the cantons of Uri and Tessin built a
road which has twice been swept away by the avalanches,
but one would think that the present might
stand while the mountains stand. So rapid is the
ascent, that the road is made often to double on itself,
so that we are going directly backward on the route;
a foot passenger may clamber across the doublets and
save his time, but the carriage must keep the zig-zag
way, patiently toiling up a smoother and more beautiful
highway than can be found in the most level
region of the United States of America! Not a
pebble in the path: the wheels meet no other
obstruction than gravitation, which is sufficient to
be overcome only by the strongest of horse power.
Yet through this very defile, long before any road
like this had been built, three armies, the French and
the Russians and the Austrians, have pursued each
other, contesting every inch of this ground, and each
one of these rugged heights, and disputing the possession
of dizzy cliffs where the hunter was afraid to
tread. Never did the feeling of Nature’s awful wildness
so take possession of my soul, as when night was
shutting in upon me in this dreary pass. Sometimes
the road is hewn out of the solid rock in the side of
the precipice, which hangs over it as a roof, and
again it is borne over the roaring stream, which in a
gulf four hundred feet below is boiling in its
obstructed course, and making for itself an opening,
it leaps away over the rocks, and rushes down while
we are toiling up. In the day-time it would be
gloomy here; it will be terrible indeed if the darkness
overtakes us before we reach our resting-place
for the night.

More than five hundred years ago an old Abbot of
Einsiedeln built a bridge over an awful chasm here,
but such is the fury of the descending stream, the
horrid ruggedness of the surrounding scenery, the
smoothness and solidity of the impending rocks, the
roar and rage of the waters as they are tossed about
and beaten into spray, and so unlikely does it appear
that human power could ever have reared a
bridge over such a cataract, that it has been called
from time immemorial the Devil’s Bridge, and so it
will be called probably till the end of time. It was
just nightfall when we reached it. It was very cold,
so far up had we ascended. We had left the carriage
and were walking to quicken the blood, when the
roar of the waters rose suddenly upon us, the spray
swept over us, and we were in the midst of a scene
of such awful grandeur, and with terror mingled, as
might well make the nerves of a strong man tremble.
The river Reuss, at this stage of its course, makes a
sweeping leap, a tremendous plunge at the very moment
it bends nearly in a semi-circle, while the rocks,
as if by some superhuman energy, have been hurled
into the torrent’s path, so as to break its fall, but
not to withstand its power. Two bridges are here—for
when the old road was swept away, the bridge
defied the storm, and this one, more solid and of far
greater span, has been thrown high above the other
which is left as an architectural curiosity in the
depths below. And long before that was built, another
one was there, and when the French in 1799
pursued the Austrians over it, and while the embattled
hosts were making hell in a furious fight upon
and over this frightful gorge, the bridge was blown
up, and the struggling foes were whelmed together in
the devouring flood. A month afterwards, and the
Russians met the French at the same spot—no bridge
was here, but the fierce Russians bound timbers together
with the scarfs of the officers, threw them over
the chasm, crossed in the midst of a murderous fire,
and drove the enemy down the Pass into the vales
below.

.il id=i03 fn=i_b_087.jpg w=311
.ca THE DEVIL’S BRIDGE.

It was dark before we were willing to quit this
fearful place. The strength of the present bridge is
so obvious, and the parapet so high, that the scene
may be contemplated without fear; but the clouds
had now gathered, hoarse thunder muttered among
the mountains, spiteful squalls of rain, cold, gloomy,
and piercing, were driving into our faces, and we
were anxious to find shelter for the night. We left
the Bridge, but in another moment plunged into utter
darkness as we entered a tunnel called the <i>Hole of
Uri</i>, where the road is bored one hundred and eighty
feet through the solid rock, a hard but the only passage,
as the stream usurps the rest of the way, and
the precipice admits no possible path over its lofty
head. This was made a hundred and fifty years ago,
and before that time the passage was made on a
shelf supported by chains let down from above. It
was called the Gallery of Uri, and along it a single
traveller could creep, if he had the nerve, in the
midst of the roar and the spray of the torrent, and
with an hungry gulph yawning wide below him.—Emerging
from this den, we entered a valley five
thousand feet above the sea; once doubtless a lake,
whence the waters of the Reuss have burst the barriers
of these giant fortresses, and found their way
into more hospitable climes. No corn grows here,
but the land flows with milk and honey—by no means
an indication of fertility, for the cows and the goats
find pasture at the foot of the glaciers, and the bees
their nests in the stunted trees and the holes of the
rocks. We drove through it till we came to Andermatt,
where the numerous lights in the windows
guided us to a rustic tavern.

By this time it had commenced raining hard, and I
began to be anxious for my young friend Rankin, and
a German student, Heinrich. But I could do no
more for them than to send a man to watch in the
highway till they should come up, and lead them into
the house where I was resolved to spend the night,
whether we could find beds or not. These rural inns
in Switzerland are rude and often far from comfortable.
But travellers here must not stand upon trifles.
The house was designed to lodge twenty travellers,
and thirty at least were here before us. A large supper
table was spread, and around it a company of
gentlemen and ladies, mostly German, were enjoying
themselves right heartily, after the day’s fatigue was
over. The London lawyer and myself had a separate
table laid for us—we soon gathered on it some of the
good things of this life, which by the way you can
find almost every where, and had made some progress
in the discussion of the various subjects before
us, when Rankin and Heinrich arrived nearly exhausted
with their toilsome walk. They had a dreadful
tale to tell of the storm they had met—which we
just escaped, and barely that. The lightning filled
the gloomy gorge, lighting up for an instant the
mighty cliffs and hanging precipices, while the thunder
roared above the sound of the torrent, and the
rain drove into their faces, disputing with them the
upward pass. But they were young men, and strong.
They told me that I never could have borne the labor
and the exposure of the walk. Two travellers and a
guide had given out, and taken lodgings in a hamlet
we had passed, and the man whom we had employed
to bring on our light bags, had also halted for the
night, and would come up early in the morning.

After supper I led them to our chamber. Upon
my arrival, the landlady assured me that every bed
in the house was full, but I insisted so strenuously on
having <i>three</i>, that the girls exchanged looks of
agreement, and one of them offered to show me a
chamber, if it would be acceptable. She led me up
three pair of stairs, into a low garret bed-room, with
one window of boards which could be opened, and
one small one of glass that could not, and here were
three beds kindly given up by the young women.
Into this chamber I now conducted my young
friends.

Worn out with their hard day’s work, but free from
all anxious care, they were asleep in five minutes,
while I coaxed the candle to burn as long as it
would, fastened it up with a pin on the top of the
candlestick, and tried to write the records of the few
past hours. It was amusing to hear my companions,
one on each side of me, talk in their sleep; Heinrich
in his native German, and Rankin in his English,
showing the restlessness of over-fatigue, while I sat
wondering at myself, so lately a poor invalid, now in
this wild region, exposed to such nights of discomfort,
and days of toil. Yet was I grateful even there,
not only for a safe shelter and a much better bed
than my Master had, but for the strength to attempt
such things, and for the luxury of health that lives
and flows in a genial current through every part of a
renovated frame.

In the morning I met an American gentleman
returning from the summit of St. Gothard pass, and
he advised me strenuously not to go further up,
unless I was going now into Italy. The most
wonderful of the engineering in the construction of
the road, had already been seen, and there was
nothing else of interest above. The same savage
scenery, in the midst of which the Reuss leaps down
2,000 feet in the course of a two hours’ walk, is continued,
and the dreariness of desolation reigns alone.
A house for the accommodation of travellers has been
maintained for hundreds of years, destroyed at times
and then restored, and a few monks have been
supported here to extend what aid they may to those
who require their assistance. We resolved to pursue
a route through the <i>Furca</i> pass, one of the most
romantic and interesting of all the passes in Switzerland.
A long day’s walk it would be over frozen
mountains and by the side of never melting glaciers,
and no carriage way! Nothing but a bridle and a
foot path, and a rough one too, was now before
us, and if we left the present road, and struck off
over the Furca, it would be four or five days before
we should reach the routes which are traversed by
wheels. Our baggage, though but a bag apiece and
blankets, was too heavy for us to carry if we walked,
and I proposed to take a horse, put on him our three
bundles, and ride by turns. Heinrich had never
heard of the mode of travelling called “ride and
tie,” and he was greatly amused when it was
described to him. Accordingly we ordered a horse
for the day. The price is regulated by law, under
the pretence of protecting the traveller, but really
for the purpose of extorting from him a sum twice as
large as he would have to pay if the business were
open to competition. The horse was brought to the
door, and when we ordered the bags of three to
be strapped on, the landlord flew into a great rage,
and declared he would not be imposed upon. I
smiled in his red face, and asked, “If he knew how
much baggage the law allowed each man to carry on
his horse.” He said he did, and I then told him
to weigh those, and he might have for his own all
over and above the legal allowance. He was still
dissatisfied, but when we bade him to take his old
nag to the stable, he suddenly cooled. Without
further delay he made fast “the traps,” gave me
a good stout fellow to conduct the party and bring
back the beast. An idle group of guides and tavern
hangers, and quite a party of Germans and English
were looking on when I bestrode the animal, and
took my seat in the midst of the bundles rising
before and behind, like the humps of a camel.
We are yet in the vale of the Urseren, not more
than a mile wide, and lofty mountains flanking its
sides. The mountain of St. Anne is clad with a
glacier, from which the “thunderbolts of snow”
come down with terrific power in the spring, and yet
there stands a forest in the form of a triangle,
pointing upward, and so placed that the slides of
snow as they come down are broken in pieces and
guided away from the village below. The great
business of the people in this vale is to keep cattle
and to fleece the strangers who travel in throngs
over the pass of St. Gothard. Hundreds of horses
are kept for hire, and nothing is to be had by a
“foreigner” unless he pays an exorbitant price.
Even the specimens of minerals are held so high,
that no reasonable man can afford to buy them.
But we are now leaving Andermatt, and on the side
of the road not long after leaving the village we saw
two stone pillars, which need but a beam to be laid
across them, and they make a gallows, on which
criminals were formerly hung, when this little
valley, like Gersau on the lake, was an independent
state. The pillars are still preserved with care, as a
memorial of the former sovereignty of the community.

We reached <i>Hospenthal</i> in a few moments; a cluster
of houses about a church, and with a tower above
the hamlet which is attributed to the Lombards. I
was struck with the exceeding loneliness and forsakenness
of this spot. It seemed that men had once
been here, but had retired from so wild and barren a
land, to some more genial clime. Hospenthal has a
hotel or two, and it is a great halting place for travellers
who are about to take our route over the Furca
to the Hospice of the Grimsel. Here we quit the
St. Gothard road, and winding off by a narrow path
in which we can go only in single file, we are soon
out of the vale, and slowly making our way up the
mountain. The hill sides are dotted with the huts
of the poor peasants, who have hard work to hold
fast to the slopes with one hand, while they work for
a miserable living with the other. The morning sun
was playing on the blue glacier of St. Anne, and a
beautiful waterfall wandered and tumbled down the
mountain; yet this was but one of many of the same
kind that we are constantly meeting as we go through
these defiles of the high Alps. The vast masses of
snow and ice on the summits are sending down
streams through the Summer, and these sometimes
leap from rock to rock, and again they clear hundreds
of feet at a single bound; slender, like a long
white scarf on the green hill, but very picturesque
and beautiful. At the foot of this mountain are the
remains of an awful avalanche, which buried a little
hamlet here in a sudden grave, and a sad story of a
maiden and a babe who perished, was told me with
much feeling by the guide as we passed over the spot.
The peasant men and women were bringing down
bundles of hay on their heads and shoulders from the
scanty meadows which here and there in a warm
bosom of the hills may be found, and as they descended
I recalled the story of Orpheus, at whose music
the trees are said to have followed him, and I could
readily understand that such a procession might be
taken or mistaken for the marching of a young forest.
We are still following up the river Reuss towards its
source, and though it is narrower, it is often fiercer
and makes longer strides at a step than it did last
evening. We cross it now and then on occasional
stones, or on rude logs, and come to a spot where the
bridge was swept away last night by an avalanche of
earth and ice, and well for us that it came in the
night before we were here to be caught. An old
man with a pickaxe in his hand had been working to
repair the crossing, and had managed to get a few
stones arranged so that foot passengers could leap
over, and the horses after slight hesitation and careful
sounding of the bottom, took to the torrent and waded
safely over. I held my feet high enough to escape a
wetting, but I heard a lady of another party complaining
bitterly that the water was so deep or her
foot so far down, I could not tell which, but it was
evident that very much against her will she had been
drawn through the river.

At Realp, a little handful of houses, we found a
small house of refreshment, where two Capuchin
friars reside to minister to travellers, and this was
the last sign of a human habitation we saw for some
weary hours. We are now so far up in the world,
that the snow lay in banks by the side of the path,
while flowers, bright beautiful flowers were blooming
in the sun. It is difficult to reconcile this apparent
contradiction in nature. The fact is not surprising
here, where we see such vast accumulations of snow
and remember that a short summer does not suffice
to melt it, but it is strange to read of flowery banks
all gay and smiling, within a few feet only of these
heaps of snow. I counted flowers of seven distinct
colors, and gathered those that would press well in
my books, souvenirs of this remarkable region. On
the right the Galenstock Glacier now appears, and
out of it vast rocks like the battlements of some old
castle shoot 1,000 feet into the air. I am now among
the ice palaces of the earth. The cold winds are
sweeping down upon me, and I hug my coat closer
as the ice blast strikes a chill to my heart.

We were just making the last sharp ascent before
reaching the summit of the Furca when I overtook a
lady sitting disconsolately by the wayside. She cried
out as soon as I came up, “O Sir, my guide is such a
brute—the saddle turns under me and I cannot get
him to fix it—my husband has gone on before me—I
cannot speak a word of German and the dumb fool
cannot speak a word of English. What shall I do?”

“Madam,” said I, “my servant shall arrange your
saddle, and I will conduct you to the summit where
the rest of your party will doubtless wait.” She
overpowered me with her expressions of gratitude,
and while my servant was putting her saddle girths
to rights, I gave her guide the needful cautions, and we
crossed a vast snow bank together, climbed the steep
pitch, and in ten minutes reached the inn at the top
of the Furca. Distant glaciers, snow clad summits,
ridges, and ranges stood around me, a world without
inhabitants, desolate, cold and grand in its icy canopy
and hoary robes of snow.

The descent was too rapid and severe for riding,
and giving the horse into the charge of the servant
we walked down, discoursing by the way of things
rarely talked of in the Alps. My young German
friend had all the enthusiasm of the French character
joined to the mysticism of his own nation. He is
well read in English literature, and familiar with
ancient and modern authors, so that we had sources
unfailing, to entertain us as we wandered on; now
sitting down to rest and now bracing ourselves for a
smart walk over a rugged pass. I became intensely
interested in him, though I had constant occasion to
challenge his opinions, and especially to contrast his
philosophy with the revealed wisdom of God. We
had spoken of these things for an hour or more when
I asked him if he had ever read “the Pilgrim’s Progress,”
and when I found he had not, I told him the
design of the allegory, and said “we are pilgrims
over these mountains, and have been cheering one
another with pleasing discourse as the travellers did
on their way to the celestial city. They came at last
in sight of its gates of pearl.”

“But what is that?”

We had suddenly turned the shoulder of a hill,
and a glacier of such splendor and extent burst upon
our view as to fix us to the spot in silent but excited
admiration. It was the first we had seen near us.
Others had been lying away in the far heights, their
surface smoothed by the distance, and their color a
dull blue; but now we were at the foot of a mountain
of ice! We could stand upon it, walk on its face,
gaze on its form and features, wonder, admire, look
above it and adore! This is the glacier of the Rhone!
That great river springs from its bosom, first with a
strong bound as if suddenly summoned into being,
works its way through a mighty cavern of ice, and
then winds along the base till it emerges in a roaring,
milky white stream and rushes down the valley
toward the sea. This glacier has been called a
“magnificent sea of ice.” It is not so. That description
conveys no idea of the stupendous scene. You
have stood in front of the <i>American</i> fall of Niagara.
Extend that fall far up the rapids, receding as it rises
a thousand feet or more from where you stand to the
crest: at each side of it let a tall mountain rise as a
giant frame work on which the tableau is to rest;
then suddenly congeal this cataract, with its curling
waves, its clouds of spray, its falling showers of
jewelry, point its brow with pinnacles of ice, and
then, then let the bright sun pour on it his beams,
giving the brilliancy not of snow but of polished ice
to the vast hill-side now before you, and you will
then have but a faint conception of the grandeur of
this glacier.

“It answers,” said Heinrich, “to Burke’s definition
of the sublime—it is vast, mysterious, terrible!”

I replied that “it was impossible for me to have
the sensation of fear, and scarcely of awe in looking
upon the scene before us—it rather had to me the
image of the outer walls of heaven, as if there must
be infinite glory within and beyond when such majesty
and beauty were without. And then these flowers
skirting the borders of this frozen pile, and smiling as
lovely as beneath the sunniest slope in Italy, forbade
the idea that this crystal mountain was of ice.”

“But will it not vanish if we look away?” said
Heinrich, as he gazed on the frozen cataracts, and
gave utterance to his admiration in the most expressive
words that German, French, English, Latin or
Greek would supply, for our discourse was in a mixture
of them all.

Soon after passing the Glacier of the Rhone we met
a peasant who assured us that he had fallen into one
of its crevices, seventy feet, and had cut his way up
with a hatchet, thus delivering himself from an icy
grave.

A little wayside inn gave us a brief respite from
our toilsome journey. We climbed the Grimsel, and
reached the Dead Sea on its summit. It is called the
Lake of the Dead, because the bodies of those who
perished in making this journey were formerly cast
into it for burial. Heinrich and I left the path and
climbed to a cliff where we looked down on the pilgrim
parties on horses and on foot, winding their way
along its borders. We sent our servant onward to
engage beds for us at the hospice of the Grimsel, and
resolved to spend the rest of the day (the sun was yet
three hours high) in this wilderness of mountain scenery.

We could now look down into the valley, a little
valley, but like an immense cauldron, the sides of
which are sterile naked rocks, eight hundred feet
high! On the west they stand like the walls and
towers of a fortified city, and in the bottom of the
vale is a single house and a small lake; but a flock
of a hundred goats and a score of cows, with tinkling
bells, are picking a scanty subsistence among the
stones. The scene was wild, savage, grand indeed,
and had there been no sun to light it up with the
lustre of heaven, it would have been dreary and dismal.
Heinrich had been very thoughtful for an hour.
He had discovered that my thoughts turned constantly
to the God who made all these mountains, while he
was ever studying the mountains themselves.

“Here I will commune with nature.”

I replied, “And I will go on a little further, and
commune with God!”

“Stay,” he cried, “I would go with you.”

“But you cannot see Him,” I said—“I see Him in
the mountain and the glacier and the flower: I hear
Him in the torrent and the still small voice of the
rills and little waterfalls that are warbling ever in our
ears. I feel his presence and something of his power.
I beg you to stay and commune with nature, while I
go and commune with God.”

I left him and wandered off alone, and in an hour
went down the mountain, and to my chamber in the
hospice. I was sitting on the bedside, arranging the
flowers I had gathered during the day, when Heinrich
entered, and giving me his hand said to me, “I
wish you would speak more to me of God!”

He sat down by my side, and I asked him if he believed
the Bible to be the Word of God.

He said he did, but he would examine it by the
light of history and reason, and reject what he did
not find to be true.

“And do you believe that the soul of man will
live hereafter?”

“I doubt,” was his desponding answer.

I then addressed him tenderly, “My dear young
friend, I have loved you since the hour I met you at
Altorf. And now tell me, with all your studies have
you yet learned how to die? You <i>doubt</i>, but are
you so well satisfied with your philosophy that you
are able to look upon death among the mountains, or
by the lightning, without fear? My faith tells me
that when I die my life and joy will just begin, and
go on in glory forever. This is the source of all my
hopes, and it gives me comfort now when I think
that I may never see my native land and those I love
on earth again. I <i>know</i> that in another land we
shall meet?”

“How do you know that you shall meet?”

“My faith, my heart, my Bible tells me so. I
shall meet all the <i>good</i> in heaven. I am sure of
one child, an angel now.”

“And where are your children?”

“Four in America, and one in heaven. I had a
boy four years ago; earth never had a fairer. His
locks were of gold and hung in rich curls on a neck
and shoulders whiter than the snow: his brow was
high and broad like an infant cherub’s; and his eye
was blue as the evening sky. And he was lovelier
than he was fair. But in the budding of his beauty,
he fell sick and died.”

“O no, not died!”

“Yes, he died here by my heart. And that child
is the only one of mine that I am sure of ever
seeing again.”

“I do not understand you.”

“If my other children grow up to <i>doubt</i> as <i>you</i>
doubt, they may wander away on the mountains of
error or the glaciers of vice, and fall into some awful
gulph and be lost forever. And if I do not live to
see my living children, I am as sure of meeting that
one now in heaven, as if I saw him here in the light
of the setting sun.—Heinrich, have you a mother,
my dear friend?”

“Yes, yes,” he cried, “and her faith is the same
as yours.”

I had seen his eyes filling, and had felt my own
lips quivering as I spoke, but now he burst into tears
and fell on my breast. He kissed my lips, and my
cheeks, and my forehead, and the hot tears rained on
my face, and mingled with my own. “O teach me
the way to feel and believe,” he said at last, as he
clung to me like a frightened child, and clasped me
convulsively to his heart. I held him long and
tenderly, and felt for him somewhat, I hope, as Jesus
did for the young man who came to him with a
similar inquiry. <i>I loved him</i>, and longed to lead
him to the light of day.



.sp 4
.h2 id=ch06
CHAPTER VI.||GLACIERS OF THE AAR.

.in +3
.ti -3
My new Friend—a Wonderful Youth—Hospice of the Grimsel—the Valley—a
comfortable Day—Glaciers of the Aar—a Gloomy Vale—Climbing a Hill—View
of the Glacier—Theory of its Formation—Caverns in the Ice—Incidents
of Men falling in—My Leap and Fall—an Artist Lost—Return.
.in
.sp 2

.di i_b_107.jpg 100 170 1.2
Heinrich proved to be a wonderful
youth. He had a warm heart, and
his intellect was cultivated to a degree
not parallelled in my acquaintance
among young men. He was
just one and twenty years of age, and had
not completed the usual course
of collegiate education. But there
was no author in the Latin or Greek
languages, poet, philosopher or historian, whose
works I have ever heard of, which were not familiar
to him, as the English Classics are to well read men
in England or America. He discoursed readily of the
style, the dialect, the shade of sentiment on any disputed
point; he cited passages and drew illustrations
from the pages of ancient literature which seemed to
him like household words: and one of our amusements
when crossing the Alps was to discuss the difference
in Greek or Latin words which are usually
regarded as synonymes. But classical learning was the
least and lowest attainment of this accomplished
youth. The whole range of Natural Sciences had
been pursued with a zeal that might be called a passion.
Botany and Mineralogy were child’s play to
him: and Chemistry had been a favorite study evidently,
for its principles often came up in our rambling
discourse, and he was master of it as if he had
been a teacher of the science for years. Geology
was a hobby of his, and he thrust it upon me often
when I wished he would let me alone, or discourse of
something else. And yet when I have said all this
I have not mentioned the department in which he
was most at home, where his soul revelled in profound
enjoyment, and in which he was resolved to
spend his life. <i>Metaphysics</i> was his favorite pursuit.
His analytical mind was always on the track of investigation,
challenging a reason for everything, questioning
the truth of every proposition, and never resting
till his reason had subjected it to the most exhausting
process. Yet in the midst of these studies including
many departments to which I have not referred,
as the exact sciences, he had polished this fine intellect
by the widest course of polite literature, perusing
in the German translations, all the old masters of the
English tongue, admiring Shakespeare and Milton,
quoting from them as a scholar would from Sophocles
or Homer, and surprising me by reference to English
authors, whose works I had not supposed were translated
into the German language. Of course the
poets and philosophers of his father-land were his
pride and love. Often he would speak of them in
terms of endearment, as if they were his personal
friends; though of all beings, present or past, in heaven
or out of it, I think he loved Plato most. This
boy was just out of his teens, a student still, and
modest as he was learned; burning to learn more;
asking questions till it was tiresome to hear them; and
never dreaming that he knew more than others. He
was the most learned young man I ever saw. And
few old men know half as much. He now joined my
party, leaving his own altogether, and resolved to
follow me to the ends of the earth.

We are now in the Vale of the Grimsel. In the
bottom of the Valley, by the side of a lake forever
dark with the shadows of overhanging hills, is the
<i>Hospice</i>, a name that here combines the idea of
hospital and hotel—its design being to furnish lodging
and entertainment to travellers, whether they are
able to pay for the hospitality or not. Last winter
the landlord of the Grimsel having insured his
house, set fire to it, to get the money, and now is in
prison for twenty years as the penalty of his crime.
In years past there have been terrible avalanches
here, and once the house was crushed by the “thunderbolts
of snow.” Often it is surrounded by snow
drifts twenty or thirty feet high, yet some one lodges
here all winter to keep up a fire and furnish shelter to
the benighted traveller. It is strange that these
lonely paths should be traversed at all in the depth
of winter. But there is no other mode of communication
between the valleys, than along these defiles,
and the traffic among the people of one canton with
another is carried on, and the intercourse of families
is kept up at the risk of life here as in other countries.
If one has a good home, it were better to stay in it
than to cross the Grimsel in the winter.

A mixed multitude were under the roof of the
Hospice. The building is yet unfinished; and it
must have required prodigious exertions to get it so
far under way, since the fire, as to make it habitable
for travellers this season. Every stick of timber
must be brought up by hand from the plain some
miles below. The walls are of stone, about three feet
thick, and rough enough. No attempt to smooth a
wall, or paint a board appears on the edifice, and the
rude bedsteads, benches and chairs suggest to the
luxurious traveller how few of the good things he has
at home are actually essential to his comfort. The
house has about forty beds, but these were far from
being sufficient to give each weary pilgrim one.
Many were obliged to choose the softest boards in the
dining room floor, and sleep on them. Yet in that
company of sixty who crowded around the supper
table were many of the learned, and titled, and beautiful,
and wealthy of many lands; meeting socially in
a dreary valley, on a journey of pleasure, and refreshing
each other with the “feast of reason and the flow
of soul.” Reserve was banished, and the hour freely
given to good cheer, in which all strove to forget the
toils of the day, in the pleasures of the evening, and
the repose of a peaceful night.

Within an hour’s walk from the door of the Hospice
is the Glacier of the Aar, the most interesting
and instructive of all the Glaciers of Switzerland. It
has been more studied by men of science than any
other. Agassiz and Forbes had their huts on its
bosom, and spent many long and weary months in
prying into the mysteries of these stupendous seas of
solid water. Not one of the whole company who
staid at the Hospice last night, turned aside for a day
to study with us this wonderful scene. A party of
English people read the guide book on the route to
Meyringen, and congratulated themselves on having
a “comfortable” day, as there was very little to see!
They were <i>doing</i> Switzerland, and were evidently
pleased to find a day before them when they had
nothing to do but to go on, without being worried
with fine views and climbing hills. One party after
another came down and took a wretched cup of
coffee, and were off on their pilgrimage, some on
foot, some on mules, and one or two were carried on
chairs by porters.

We were left alone at the Hospice, and after
breakfast set off to spend the day on the Glaciers.
There are two of them, the Obi and Unter, or Upper
and Lower; the latter being the most easily reached,
and happily the most interesting. It is eighteen
miles long, and about three miles wide. To circumnavigate
it therefore, is not the journey of a day, but
it may be explored on foot, and Hugi, the naturalist,
is said to have rode over it on a horse. The morning
was not promising. Heavy mists had lodged in
the vale of the Grimsel. But far above them in
gloomy grandeur rose the sterile ridges of rocks,
towering aloft, and looking like the battlements of
giants’ castles, inaccessible save to the chamois and
his pursuer, who often risked, and sometimes threw
away his life in his daring adventures to secure his
prey. Even the chamois has now almost entirety disappeared,
and the eagles alone have their dwelling
places in these desolate abodes. Yet from the lofty
heights some beautiful cascades are pouring all the
way down into the vale, foaming as they fall; and
sometimes caught by the intervening rocks, and sent
out from the side of the precipice they melt into
spray, and again on a lower ledge are gathered to
pursue their downward course. Along the bottom of
this gloomy vale we walked for an hour, till we came
in sight of a mighty pile of earth, rocks, ice and
snow. At first we thought we had come to a vast
heap of sand, or to the <i>debris</i> brought down by an
avalanche of soil with stones intermingled, but from
the base of it a torrent was rushing, not of clear blue
water, but of a dirty milky hue, as are all the streams
when they issue from the beds of these Glaciers.
The front of the mass was perhaps one hundred and
fifty feet high, and nearly perpendicular, and here it
was half a mile in width. On nearer approach, we
could see the rocks of blue ice projecting through the
coating of earth, showing plainly that the body of the
great pile before us was the cold icebergs hid beneath
a covering of earth that had been washed down upon
it, from the mountains above. Now and then large
masses of earth, or a huge boulder would be dislodged
from the brow of the pile, and thunder along down,
as we sat watching for these miniature avalanches.
The sense of the terrible was strong upon us now. It
was not beautiful: it was grand and awful, as we
changed our position lest the falling rocks should
overtake us in their course. But a few little birds
were flying about from stone to stone unconscious of
danger, the solitary inhabitants of this frozen world.

We now determined to ascend and look on its face.
With incredible toil we climbed the hill by the side
of it. If there ever was a path, we could not find it,
but from rock to rock, often pulling ourselves up by
the stunted bushes, we worked our way. Onward
and upward we mounted, and at last were rewarded
for the struggle by standing abreast of the glacier,
where we could walk around and upon it and contemplate
its stupendous proportions. From the
bosom of it rises the Finster-Aarhorn, a lone pyramid
that seems now to touch the blue sky: so cold
and stern it stands there, its head forever covered
with snow and its foot in this everlasting ocean of
ice. The Schreckhorn is the other peak that stands
yet farther off, but the clouds are now so dense
around its summit, that I cannot see its hoary head.

Here we are six thousand feet above the level of
the sea, and for three-quarters of the year the
snow is falling on these mountains: not an April
snow that melts as it falls, but a dry powder, into
which a man without snow-shoes would sink
out of sight, as in the water. On the loftiest of these
mountains, the surface of the snow melts a little
every day, and the deeper you descend into the
snow, the melting is going on also. But at night it
freezes, as by day for a little while it thaws, and this
process is continued until the snow is gradually converted
into ice. The high valleys are filled with
these ever increasing deposits of snow, which are
thus constantly undergoing this change, and as the
fresh deposit far exceeds what is carried off by melting,
the enormous mass is rather increased than
diminished by the lapse of time. It becomes a fixed
fact; yet not fixed, for the most remarkable, and to
my mind, the sublimest fact in this relation, is that
these glaciers are actually moving steadily, year by
year. The projecting mass in the lowest valley, as
where we were standing a few hours ago, is melting
away, and sending out the river that leaves its bosom
on its mission into a world far below. Underneath
the glacier, where it presses on the earth, which has
a heart of fire, the work of dissolution is rapidly going
on, while the sun on the upper surface melts the ice,
and streams flow along and cut deep crevices into
which the uncautious traveller may fall never to rise
again till the last day. Some of these glaciers may
be traversed underneath, by following the streams.
Hugi wandered a mile in this way underneath magnificent
domes, through which the sun-light was
streaming, and among crystal columns which had
been left standing as if to support the superincumbent
mass. The water, as in rocky caverns, trickles
through and freezes in beautiful stalactytes, to adorn
these palaces, unseen except by the eye to which
darkness and light are both alike. As this decay of
the glacier takes place, and it is always more rapid
near the lower border of it than above, the pressure
of the upper masses brings the whole mountain
slowly along: with a steadiness of march that cannot
be perceived by the eye, but which is marked with
precision, and chronicled from year to year. The
place where great rocks are reposing on the surface
near the edge of the mountain against which the glacier
presses has been carefully noted, and the next
year and for many subsequent years, the onward progress
of the boulder has been noted. Blocks of
granite have been inserted in the bosom of the glacier,
and their position defined by their relation to
the points of land in sight; and years afterwards they
are away on their journey, and by and by, they have
disappeared altogether as the glacier moves on and
heaves and breaks and closes again. More wonderful
still, it is recorded that a “mass of granite of twenty
six thousand cubic feet, originally buried under the
snow, was raised to the surface and even elevated
above it upon two pillars of ice, so that a small army
might have found shelter under it.” The men of
science who have pursued investigations here under
circumstances quite as fearful and forbidding as the
navigators around the north Pole, have a rude hut in
which they make themselves as comfortable as the
nature of the case will admit; but this house though
founded on a rock is not stationary. It moves on
with the mighty field of ice, about three hundred feet
in a year, or nearly one foot every day: not so rapidly
in winter as in summer, for the rate of progress
depends on the melting, which is arrested for a brief
period during the terrible winters of this Alpine
region. Other glaciers move with greater rapidity
than this. The Mere de Glace is believed to move at
the rate of four or five hundred feet every year, and
it is said that the glacier is gradually wasting out.

The surface of this frozen sea is exceedingly irregular,
depending on the nature of the ground below,
and the progress of the ice. When a stream has cut
away a great seam, where the descent of the moving
mass will be swift when it does move, the shock will
throw up the ice in ridges, in pyramids, in various
fantastic shapes, piling rocks on rocks of ice, as if
some great explosion underneath had upheaved the
surface and the fragments had come down in wild
confusion, like the ruins of a crystal city. Then the
sun gradually melts those towers, and they assume
strange shapes of wild and dazzling beauty, unreal
palaces, glittering minarets, silvered domes and
shining battlements; freaks of nature we call them,
but they are too beautiful for chance work, and we
do not know to what eyes these forms of glory may
give pleasure, nor why it is that God displays so
much of his selectest skill and most stupendous
power, where few behold it of the race to which we
belong. Doubtless our own great Cataract leaped and
thundered in the wilderness thousands of years, with
no human ear or eye to receive its majesty and
beauty, but it did not roar in vain. God has other
and nobler worshippers than man, and while we are
groping like moles beneath the surface, and striving
in our blindness to discover the mysteries of God’s
works, there are minds to which these wonders are
revelations of their Maker’s glory and goodness, and
they understand, admire and adore.

Here was a world of solid water, gradually enlarging
and then melting away, to send down rivers into
the plains below, and this with the other glaciers of the
Alps, is thus supplying all the rivers in Europe which
might otherwise be dry. Yet as other rivers in other
lands are constantly supplied without this provision,
we must suppose that some other design in Providence
is laid, which science may or may not discover, but
whether it does or not, we are certain that they are
not without a purpose corresponding with the magnitude
of their proportions, and the wisdom of Him
who, though omnipotent, never wastes His strength
in works without design.

We confined our walks to the edges of this solid
but still treacherous sea. We had yesterday conversed
with a man who had fallen into the crevices
of one of these glaciers, and we had a greater horror
of repeating the experiment. The case is on record
of a shepherd who was crossing this very glacier
with his flock, when he fell into one of the clefts,
into which a torrent was pouring. This stream was
his guide to life and liberty again; for he followed
its course under the archway it had made, until it
led him to the foot of the glacier into the open air.
But a Swiss clergyman, a spiritual shepherd, M.
Mouron, was leaning on the edge of a fissure to
explore a remarkable formation over the brink, when
the staff on which he rested gave way, and he fell,
only to be drawn out again a mangled corpse. A
man was let down by a rope, and after two or three
unsuccessful expeditions, found him at last, and was
drawn up with the body in his arms.

Coming down from the hill, we had hard work in
crossing some dangerous clefts in the rocks, and once
I planted my Alpen-stock firmly, as I thought, in the
thin soil, and leaped; the spike failed; the foot of
the staff slipped on and left the steel in the ground,
and I was sprawling generally along down the hill:
fortunately I recovered my foothold, and came down
standing! And this is a good place in which to say
that shoes with iron nails in the soles are not the best
for walking over these mountains: a good pair of
boots with double soles have served me many times,
sticking fast in the face of a slippery rock, while
travellers shod with iron have been sliding down
with no strength of sole to resist the gravitation.
But I met with no such misfortune in all my travels
over the most dangerous passes, and under circumstances
of trial not often exceeded by those who
wander in these parts.

We had several sorts of weather in this expedition
to the source of the Aar. The misty morning was
succeeded by a glowing sun at noon, followed by
clouds and rain. When this was coming, we thought
it time to be going, and gathering a few flowers,
as usual, on the verge of the cold beds of ice, we
turned our weary steps towards the Hospice. It
was our good fortune just then to meet an Italian
artist who had lost his way, and we had the pleasure
of guiding him to the Hospice. Wandering with his
knapsack and port folio, in search of the beautiful
in nature, which he sketched by the way, it was of
no great consequence to him, in which direction he
travelled, but a storm was now at hand, it was
rapidly growing cold, and he was going every
moment farther from any place of shelter.

We were soon housed safely in the Hospice; and
glad enough to stretch ourselves on a bed after the
walk of the morning. It was hard to keep warm
anywhere else but in bed. The house was yet so
unfinished and open, and the storm increasing every
moment; a wretched old stove in one corner of the
eating-room, scarcely giving any heat with the few
sticks of fuel we were able to find. We wrapped
blankets around us, and tried to write, and when that
proved to be more than we could accomplish under
the difficulties, I took my Bible and read to my
German friend some of the sublimest passages in the
Psalms, where the Lord is revealed among the mountains,
and his majesty portrayed by the loftiest of his
works. He listened with interest, and when I laid
aside the book, he asked for it, and read it long and
earnestly.

As the evening drew on, a few travellers began to
drop in, and at seven o’clock a company, much like
the one of last night, but all with new faces, sat down
to supper.



.sp 4
.h2 id=ch07
CHAPTER VII.||MOUNTAINS, STREAMS AND FALLS.

.in +3
.ti -3
Pedestrianism—Mountain Torrents—Fall of the Handek—The Guide and his
Little Ones—Falls of the Reichenbach—Perilous Point of View.
.in
.sp 2

.di i_b_122.jpg 100 170 1.4
Not in the best of spirits, nor in as
good condition as a pedestrian could
wish, I set off the next morning,
with my young friends. We would
have felt better but for a foolish
resolution to carry our own knapsacks
and overcoats and to make
one day’s journey without guide
or mule. Success is apt to make
one proud; and we had improved so much in our
walking with each day’s experience, that we actually
began to think we could do anything in that line.
The storm of the night before had gone by, and a
clear cool day encouraged us. Alas, we knew not
how soon, in the midst of glaciers, and in sight of
dazzling snow-drifts, the hot sun would thaw our
resolution, and compel us to call lustily for help,
when no Hercules would be at hand to lend us aid.

Not a wilder or more romantic path had we found
than the one which led us out of the vale of the
Grimsel. The river Aar is by our side, leaping from
ledge to ledge in its rapid descent; dashing now
against rocks and foaming around them and onward,
as if maddened by every obstacle and brooking no
delay. Water in motion is always beautiful. Here
on our right hand a streamlet is falling from the
giddy height of a thousand feet above us. At first it
slips along on the edge of the rocks, as if afraid to
fall, and then with a graceful bound it clears the side
of the mountain, and comes down to a lower level,
where it reposes for a moment in a basin made without
hands, and again it flows along down like a long
white robe suspended on the hill side, tastefully
winding itself, as in folds.

In full view, but far above us the snow lies fresh
and white, for much of it fell there yesterday: and
among the clouds as they roll open and let us see
their beds, the blue glacier lies. Some of the views
along here are exceedingly grand, and in the midst
of barrenness that can hardly be excelled, the soul
feels that enough is here to make a world, though
there is little vegetation, and not a human habitation.
We frequently cross the torrent by narrow bridges,
and pause on each of them to watch the angry waters
whirling underneath. I was arrested on one of them
by the sight of a reservoir hollowed out of the solid
rock by the water; it would hold twenty barrels,
and was full. The torrent was now raving a few
inches below, while the water within was as placid
in the sunshine as if it had never moved. The
contrast was beautiful. Let the mad world rush by,
noisy, turbulent and thoughtless: it is better to be
calm and trusting: certainly it is better if our rest is
on a rock which cannot be moved.

The mountains rise suddenly from the edge of the
torrent, and there is barely room in some places for
the path and the stream. There is great danger too
in travelling here in the winter when the avalanches
come rushing down the precipitous sides of these
mountains. Their work of destruction is lying all
around us. They sweep across the path and for a
long distance have laid the rock perfectly bare, and
polished it so smoothly, that there is constant danger
of sliding off into the gulf by the side of the way.
Grooves have been cut in the rock, that the feet of
the mules may have some support, but a prudent
traveller will trust to his own feet and his staff, and
tread cautiously. We become so accustomed to
these dangerous places, that we pass them without
emotion; but there is never a season without its fatal
accidents to travellers, and none but fool-hardy persons
will needlessly expose their lives. An American
family returned home a few days ago, having left the
mangled corpse of their son, a lad of twelve years, in
some frightful gorge into which he had fallen while
riding on a mule in the midst of the Alps. We frequently
hear of painful facts like these, yet there is
not a pass in Switzerland which may not be safely
made with prudence and coolness.

One of the finest cascades we had yet seen was on
our right, after we had made about five miles from
the hospice. Its width of stream, volume of water,
and great height, entitle it to a name and a record
which it has not; and this has frequently appeared to
me strange in this journey; that <i>falls</i> in Switzerland,
of comparatively little beauty, have been painted and
praised the world over, while others of more romantic
and impressive features have no place in the hand-books,
but are strictly anonymous. The one we are
now speaking of, attracted our attention as decidedly
more interesting than any we had seen among the
mountains, and in this opinion I presume others will
agree. Its misfortune is that it is within a mile of
the <sc>Handek</sc>, which we are now approaching. A
huge log-hut received us, and we found refreshments
such as might be expected in a wilderness like this.
Sour bread and sour wine, with strong cheese, and a
strange-looking pie, composed of materials into which
it was not prudent to inquire, gave us a lunch that
might have been worse. We were glad to get it, but
even more pleased to find a place where we could lay
down our burdens, under which we had been groaning
for an hour. This pedestrianism in the Alps is very
well to talk about, but it is not the most agreeable
mode of travelling to one who is accustomed only to
a sedentary life. We could find no mules here, however,
but meeting a sturdy fellow who was going up
the pass, and who was a guide but not just now
engaged, we made a bargain with him to turn about
and carry our traps to Meyringen. He was on his
way over the Grimsel into Canton Vallais to buy
eggs and butter, which he and his son, who was with
him, would bring back to sell in the lower valleys.
This is the way in which the traffic among the cantons
is chiefly carried on. We are constantly meeting
the traders, men and women, with long baskets or
wooden cans on their backs, trudging over these
mountains, exchanging the produce of one part of the
country for that of another. And this business is
driven in winter as well as summer, and many lose
their lives in the snow, or are overwhelmed by the
avalanches. Our man now sent his boy on alone;
gave him a few directions as to what articles he
should buy, and where to wait his return, and then
set off with us. I was astonished that a father would
trust a lad of such tender years (he was not more than
twelve), to go off on such an expedition alone, in such
a region as this; and after they had parted, I slipped
some money into the little fellow’s hand, and said a
cheering word or two, for I felt as if it were cruel
thus to leave him.

The river Aar has been rushing along by us, and
now it has reached the verge of a precipice more
than a hundred feet high. At this point another
stream of only less volume forces its way across the
path, and dashes boldly into the Aar on the brink of
the fall. Like two frantic lovers they take the mad
leap together into the fearful gulf. Standing above
the brow of the fall, and looking into the dark abyss,
where the vast column of water stands, silvered at
the summit, spread and broken into foam as it reaches
the base, with clouds of spray rising from the boiling
depths below, we see a cataract that combines more
of the sublime with the very beautiful than any other
in Switzerland. After we had gazed upon it from the
bridge at the brow, we went around and down
through the forest, and reached the ledge from which
we could look up and out upon the column of waters
now pouring before us in exceeding strength. A
faint rainbow trembled midway, but the pine trees
were too thick to admit the sun’s rays in full blaze
upon the face of the fall. But the surrounding
scenery adds so much to the gloomy grandeur of the
scene, that I am quite willing to write this down as
a <i>real</i> cataract, a wonderful leap and rush of waters,
in the midst of a ravine of terrific construction;
filling the mind with the strongest sense of wildness,
horror, desolation and destruction, while the image of
beauty in the water and the bow, plays constantly
over the face of all. We left it with strong emotions
of pleasurable excitement, and shall retain the recollections
of the falls of the Aar for many days.

The path by and by led under an extraordinary
projection of rock, shelving over, and making a
pavilion. The descent became more rapid, until we
took to a long flight of stone steps in the path: and
then on a lower grade, we came upon meadow land,
through which the grass had been cut away for foot
passengers to make a shorter course than that by
which the horses must find their way down. We
entered a little cottage and refreshed ourselves <i>again</i>,
with coffee and milk, and had some pleasant talk with
the old lady and one or two of the neighbors who
had dropped down from some mountain home; for it
is even pleasant, if no useful knowledge is gathered,
to learn the thoughts and feelings of these secluded
people, and to find that enjoyment, and contentment
can exist as truly and beautifully in the dreary
heights of these Alpine pasturages, as in the courts
of kings: and a little more so.

For we were not very far above a lovely valley,
one of the sweetest spots that I carry in my memory.
It is surprising how suddenly the line of barrenness
is passed, and the region of fruits and abundant
vegetation bursts upon you in this country. We had
not been two hours from dreary and inhospitable
Guttanen, when we emerged from the narrow defile
into a vale, a plain, a basin of rare loveliness for
situation and embellishment. Level as a threshing
floor, with a hundred Swiss cottages scattered over it,
and each of them surrounded with a garden stored
with fruits, apples, pears, and the like, while a stream
flowing through the midst of it divided the vale into
two settlements, in one of which a neat church sent
up its graceful spire. We had been loitering along
down, and it was now drawing toward evening: the
bell of the old church was ringing for evening
prayers, and the people, a few of them, were gathering
in their sanctuary as we passed. Four mountains,
each of them a distinct pyramid, rise on as
many sides of this valley, and seem at once to shut
it from the world, and to stand around it as towers
of defence, as the mountains are round about
Jerusalem. This is the Vale of Upper Hasli; the
river Aar flows through it; on the right as we are
going, is the village of Im-Hof, and on the left the
settlement is called Im-Grund. We passed a low
house, like all the rest, and three little children in a
row, broke out with a song, a sweet Psalm tune, such
as our Sabbath school children would sing. We
stopped to listen, and the guide stood with us in front
of the group, while they sang one after another of
their native melodies as birds of the forest would
warble an evening song. The youngest was not
more than two years old; and when we had given
them some money for their music, I took the little
thing by the hand, and said, “Come away with me.”
The guide took it by the other, and it trotted along
between us with so much readiness, that it occurred
to me instantly that these might be the children of
the man who was with me. I said to him, “Are
these yours?” “Yes Sir,” said he, and catching up
the little thing in his arms, he kissed it fondly, and
carried it on with all the burdens already on his
back. When he had put it down and the children
had returned, I asked him why it was that no sign of
recognition passed between him and his children
when we first came up to them as they stood by the
side of the house. He told me that he had taught
them to receive him in this way when he came by
with strangers, whom he was guiding, and as they
sang to receive what money might be given them it
was better that it should not be known there was any
relation between him and them. I had detected the
connection by the willingness of the babe to follow
us, and the father was delighted to be able to discover
himself to his child, and to take it for a
moment in his arms. This incident reminded me of
a striking scene in the well known history of William
Tell, where the tyrant Gessler confronts the son with
the father, and they both, without preconcert, but by
a common instinct of caution, deny one another,
and persist in the denial till the father is about to
die.

Leaving the valley, we have a sharp hill to climb.
A zig-zag path for carriages has been made over it
at great expense of money and labor; so that this
vale may be reached from the other side. The hill
must at some distant period in the past have resisted
the progress of the Aar, and this romantic valley
was probably a beautiful lake in the midst of these
noble mountains. But the hill by some convulsion
has been rent from the top to the bottom, and the
river finds its way through a fearful cavern; one of
the most awful gorges that can be found in Switzerland.
After crossing the hill we left the road, and
following our guide for twenty minutes came to
the mouth of the cave, that leads down to the bed of
the river, where it is rushing through with frightful
force in darkness but not silence; for the roar of
the waters is repeated among the rocks, adding
greatly to the terror of the scene. It is only half an
hour’s walk from the Cave to Meyringen; but we
made it more than an hour, enjoying the fine views
that opened upon us as we stood above the village.
It is but three miles across the plain, and as I look
upon the splendid cataract of the Reichenbach falling
into it on one side, and the Alpbach coming
down on the other, and streaming cascades in great
numbers pouring into it down the precipitous sides
of the mountains, the first thought that strikes the
mind is of the danger that the valley would be filled
with water one of these days and the people driven
out. Such a calamity has indeed occurred, and to
guard against its return, a stone dyke one thousand
feet long and eight feet wide has been built, that the
swollen river may be conducted with safety out of
the vale. Long years ago the mountain torrent
brought down a mass of earth with it, so suddenly
and so fearfully that in one brief hour, a large part
of the village was buried twenty feet deep, and the
desolation thus wrought still appears over the whole
face of the plain. The Church has a black line
painted on it to mark the height to which it was
filled with the mud and water in this deluge of 1762.
There is something very fearful in the idea of dwelling
in a region subject to such visitations. But there
is a fine race of men and women here. The men are
spoken of as models for strength and agility, and the
matches and games in which they annually contend
with the champions of other cantons decide their
claims to the distinction. The women are good looking,
and that is more than I can say for most of the
women I have met among the Alps; where the hardy,
exposed, and toilsome life they lead, in poverty and
disease, gives them such a look as I cannot bear to
see in a female face. In fact I could not tell a man
from a woman but by their dress in many parts of
the mountains. Now we are down in the region of
improved civilization, and some taste in dress begins
to appear among the women, who rig themselves out
in a holiday or Sunday suit of black velvet bodice,
white muslin sleeves, a yellow petticoat, and a black
hat set jauntingly on one side of the head, with their
braided hair hanging down their backs. An old
woman on the hill at whose house I stopped for a
drink, told me I ought to stay there till next Sunday
and see them all come out of church; “a prettier
sight I would never see in all my life.”

Coming down from the Hospice of the Grimsel, I
was filled with admiration when I entered the valley
in which the villages of Im-Hof and Im-Grund lie,
with their single church and hundred cottages.
Naigle, my guide, was one of the dwellers in this
vale, and the meeting with his children as he passed
through had deeply interested me in the place and
the people. I wished to know more of their habits
and especially I would know the spirit and the power
of the religion which these people professed. They
are so secluded from all the world, so girt with great
mountains and compelled to look upwards whenever
they would see far, that it seemed to me they must
be a thoughtful religious people, even if their way of
religion was not the same as mine. It was a Protestant
Canton, and so far their faith was mine, but
there is a wide difference between the faith and practice
of many churches that profess Protestantism, as
there is also in the churches under the dominion of
the Pope of Rome.

Naigle was a character. I was sure of it in five
minutes after he was in my service. Six feet high on
a perpendicular, he was at least six feet four, on a
curve, for long service in carrying heavy burdens
over the mountains had made a bend in his back
like a bow that is never unstrung. I had asked him
how many of those children he had, and he had told
me eight: and he did not improve in my good opinion
when he offered as the only objection to selling
me the youngest, that he would be sent to prison if
he did. Yet Naigle loved his children I am sure,
and would not part with one of them unless for the
sake of improving its prospects for the future. His
own were dark enough. One franc a day, less than
twenty cents of our money, is the price of a day’s
labor in the hardest work of the year, though the
very men who are glad to get this of their neighbors,
will not guide a stranger through their country, or
carry his bag, for less than five francs for eight or ten
hours. The women will work out doors all day for
less than a man’s wages, and perform the same kind
of labor. This Naigle was a hard-working man, it
was very plain, and there was a decided streak of
good sense in him that assured me, he could give me
much valuable information, in spite of that miserable
mixture of German and French which was the
only language he could speak. Fortunately I
had my young German friend with me, and we managed
among us to extract from Naigle all we desired.
We had good rooms at Meyringen, and Naigle was
to stay over night there and return to his family in
the morning. I asked him where he would sleep;
and he said “in the stable,” a lodgment I afterwards
found to be common in this and other European countries:
not in rooms fitted up over the stalls, as in
America, but in bunks by the side of the horses: in
the midst of foul atmosphere which would be enough,
I should suppose, to stifle any man in the course of
the night. Yet I have heard a German gentleman
say that there is no smell so pleasant to him as that
of a stable, and I record it as another evidence of the
truth of the adage “there is no disputing about <i>tastes</i>.”
Naigle came up to my room in the evening, sat
down on a trunk, and answered questions for an hour
or two, but I can put all I learned of him into a moderate
compass, though it will want the freshness and
often the peculiar turn of thought with which he
imparted it.

Naigle told me first of his family which he had
great difficulty in supporting on the low wages he
received, and the small profits he could make on his
trade with the neighboring valleys. At least half of
the year, he said, they do not have a particle of meat
in the house: they live chiefly on potatoes and beans,
with bread and milk: few vegetables, and these not
the most nutritious. The snow comes on so early in
autumn and lies so late in the spring that the season
for cultivation is very short, though they try to make
the most of it while it lasts, as they do of the little
land in their valley, and on the mountain sides. Yet
poverty often stares them in the face with a melancholy
threat of famine. No people on earth dwell in
such glorious scenery and in such destitution of the
real comforts of life.

But what are the morals of such a people? Are
the virtues of social life held in honor among them,
and are the children of these mountain homes trained
up in the way they should go? One of the severest
replies I have had was given to me by a Swiss guide,
who had followed his business of showing strangers
through the country for thirty years: and when he
told me he had three sons grown up to manhood I
asked him if they were guides also? He said, “No, he
never allowed them to travel about with foreigners:
the boys learned too many bad words and ways in
that business.” Very likely intercourse with travellers
is not happy on the morals of any people, but it
is little that the dwellers in these valleys see of foreigners,
who push through them without pausing even
to spend a night. Naigle gave me however to understand
that the standard of social morals was very low
among them, and this was confirmed by all that I
learned from the various classes of men with whom
I came in contact during my journey in this country.
It is true everywhere, that virtue does not flourish in
the extremes of poverty or wealth.

He was greatly interested in the little church, and
was pleased to answer all my inquiries. The pastor,
he said, was a good man who was kind to them in
sickness, visiting them to give the consolations of the
gospel, and especially at such times did they prize his
instructions and prayers. This service was rendered
freely to the poorest among them, on whom the pastor
calls as soon as he hears that they are in distress, and
he is always engaged in looking among his flock to
find those who have need of his peculiar care. The
same good shepherd has charge of the parish school,
to which all the children are sent; and if the parents
are able to pay anything toward their children’s education,
they are expected to do so, but if not they are
not deprived of the privileges of the school. Here
they are taught to read, to write, and to keep accounts;
but more than all this, they are instructed in
the catechism of the church, and are examined often
on it, and encouraged to become acquainted with the
doctrines and duties of religion. It was hard for me to
convey my idea to Naigle when I sought to learn of
him, if the good pastor required of the young people
any proof of <i>regeneration</i>, or a change of heart, before
giving them the second sacrament. He said their
children are all baptized in infancy, and admitted to
the Lord’s Supper when they are old enough, and
good enough, and understand the doctrines taught in
the school.

“But what if one of those who has come to the
holy sacrament falls into some sin, as stealing, or profane
swearing?”

“O, in that case he is not allowed to come to the
sacrament, till he has repented and reformed. The
minister is very strict about that, and the people who
belong to the church, that is, those who wish to be
considered as good Christian people, never indulge in
any of those things which are forbidden by the Bible.
There are many loose people in the valley who have
no care for God or man, but have no connection with
the church.”

On the whole, I was led to infer from what Naigle
said that the church of the Upper Hasli valley is
about in the same condition with hundreds of others
in this and other lands. There is in the midst of this
mountain scenery far removed from the intercourse
of the world, where a newspaper is rarely seen, and
few books are ever read, a little people among whom
God has some friends, who in their way are striving
to serve him, and whose service it will be pleasure to
accept. Many of them have only a form of religion.
The Romish religion that surrounds these lands, and
which is so admirably framed for an ignorant and
sensual people, pervades the minds of many who are
Protestants in name, and who cannot be taught, or
rather will not learn, that salvation is only by faith
in the Saviour. That other gospel which gives heaven
to him who does penance for his great sins, and
bows often to the picture of a handsome woman, is
<i>the</i> religion for a people who cannot read, or who
have no books if they can. Ignorance and Romanism
go hand in hand.

My estimate of the Swiss character has wofully depreciated
since I have travelled among these mountains.
With a history such as Greece might be proud
of, and a race of heroes that Rome never excelled in
the days when women would be mothers only to have
sons for warriors; the Swiss people now are at a point
of national and social depression painful to contemplate.
They are indebted largely to the defences of
nature for the comparative liberty they enjoy, and
perhaps to the same seclusion is to be referred their
want of a thousand comforts of life, which an improved
state of society brings. All the romance of a
Swiss cottage is taken out of a traveller’s mind, the
moment he enters one of these cabins and seeks refreshment
or rest. The saddest marks of poverty meet
him in the door. The same roof is the shelter of the
man, woman and beast. The same room is often the
bed chamber of all. Scanty food, and that miserably
prepared, is consumed without regard to those domestic
arrangements which make life at home a luxury.
There is no <i>future</i> to the mind of a Swiss youth. He
lives to live as his father lived—and that is the end
of life with him. Perhaps he may have a gun, and
in that case, to be the best shot in the valley may
fill his ambition: or if he is strong in the arms and
legs he may aim at distinction in the games which
once a year are held at some hamlet in the Canton,
where the wrestlers and runners contend for victory,
and others throw weights and leap bars as of old in
Greece, when kings were not ashamed to enter the
lists. Many of the youth of Switzerland are willing
to sell themselves into the service of foreign powers,
as soldiers—Swiss soldiers—hired to be shot at, and
shoot any body a foreign despot may send them to
slay: a service so degrading, and at the same time
so decidedly hazardous to life and limb, with so poor
a chance for pay, that none but a people far gone in
social degradation would be willing thus to make
merchandise of their blood. Yet they have fought
battles bravely with none of the stimulus of patriotism,
and their blood has been as freely poured out
for tyrants who hired them, as if they were bleeding
for their own and the land of William Tell.

.sp 2
<i>Falls of the Reichenbach.</i>

I had enjoyed all the pleasures of pedestrianism
that I wished, and told Naigle to get me a horse for
to-morrow. He was willing to go on with us for a
day or two more, but I gave him a trifle for his wife,
and to pay him for his evening while I kept him talking
when he would have been sleeping; and after he
had brought me a man who would go with his horse,
and carry me on over the Wengern Alp, I dismissed
him. There is nothing in Swiss travelling more annoying
than the impositions practised upon you by those
who have horses or mules for hire. The price
for a horse is at the rate usually of about ten francs
or two dollars a day; but if you are not to return the
next day to the place from which you started, (and
you rarely or never do,) you must pay the same price
for the horse to come back. The driver manages to
find a traveller to come back with, and so gets double
pay both ways in nine trips out of ten. If the business
were left open to competition without the help
of government, the price would be reduced. Naigle
brought me a man who would go with his horse as
far as I liked for ten francs a day, and nothing for
return money, but he desired me to set off in the
morning on foot, and he would be a few minutes off,
out of the village, for if the landlords who keep
horses to let, knew that he was at the business on his
own hook, they would molest him. He served me
well, and I paid him to his entire satisfaction.

Leaving Meyringen on a lovely morning, the last
of August, crossing the Aar by a bridge, I came at
once to the Baths of Reichenbach, where there is a
good hotel, said to be better than those at Meyringen.
The grounds about are tastefully arranged, and
an establishment fitted up for invalids, with every
convenience for warm and cold baths on a moderate
scale. If plenty of mountain water and mountain air
will make sick people well, here is a fine place for
them to come and be cured. I climbed the mountain
in haste, to get the finer view of the Reichenbach
Fall, whose roar I had heard, and the spray of
which was rising continually before me. I could see
the torrent as it took its first leap out of the forest,
but it plunged instantly out of sight into a deep
abyss, and I must ascend to its brow, and see the
rush of waters as they descend into the gorge. The
path to those coming down is very difficult, so steep,
indeed, that it is safer and pleasanter to leave the
horse and come on foot. But we went up slowly till
we reached a meadow of table land, which we were
permitted to cross on paying a small toll, to a house
which has been built at the point where the best
view of the fall from below can be had. It is almost
a shame to board up such scenes as these, and compel
a man to look through a window at a scene where he
would have nothing around him but the mountain,
flood and sky. The young woman was very civil,
and offered us woodwork for sale, and a view through
colored glass, and a subscription-book to record our
donations for the construction of the foot-path, and we
finally had the privilege of taking a look in silence.
A narrow, but no mean stream, plunging <sc>TWO THOUSAND</sc>
feet makes a cataract before which the spectator
stands with awe. The leap is not made at once, yet
the river rests but twice in all that distance, and only
for a moment then. The point of view where we are
now beholding it, is midway of the upper and grandest
of these successive falls. The fury of the descending
torrent is terrible. The spray rises in perpetual
clouds from the dread abyss into which the river
leaps. It might be a bottomless abyss, so far as
human penetration can discover, for no arm can
fathom it, no eye can pierce the dark cavern where
the waters boil and roar, and whence they issue only
to make another leap into the vale below. The bow
of God is on the brow of the cataract. I do so love
to find it there, not more for its exceeding beauty
than the feeling of hope and safety it always inspires.
We counted all the colors as it waved and smiled so
fondly in the spray, as if it loved its birth-place.—Having
had the finest opportunity of seeing the fall
from this point, we did not return across the field to
the horses, but took the foot-path straight up the
mountain, over a rough and toilsome way, led on by
a little lad who seemed anxious to do us the favor.
He guided us by a walk of twenty minutes to the
brink of the precipice. The path was just wide
enough for one person to pass around the headland,
holding by the bushes as we walked, and thus by
taking turns in the perilous excursion, we went to the
brow of the cataract, and looked down the front of
the terrific fall. A single misstep or the slipping of
a foot, might plunge the curious gazer into the gulph;
yet so seductive and so flattering is such danger, we
rarely have the least sense of it till it is over. Not
the water only, but the whole prospect from this
overhanging cliff, is in a high degree sublime. The
plains of Meyringen, the mountains beyond, from
which cascades are hanging like white lace veils on
the green hill-sides, villages and scattered cottages,
the river Aar shooting swiftly across the valley, are
now in full view, and we turn away reluctantly from
the sight to resume the ascent.



.sp 4
.h2 id=ch08
CHAPTER VIII.||A GLACIER AND AVALANCHE.

.in +3
.ti -3
Alpine Horn—Beggars—The Rosenlaui Glacier—Beautiful Views—Glorious
Mountain Scenes—Mrs. Kinney’s “Alps”—A Lady and Babe—The Great
Scheidek—Grindelwald—Eagle and Bear—Battle with Bugs—Wengern
Alp—A real Avalanche—The Jungfrau.
.in
.sp 2

.di i_b_146.jpg 100 170 1.2
A beautiful Chamois was standing
on the ledge of rock that overhung
the path as I turned away
from the Reichenbach Fall, and I
was pleased to see so fine a specimen
of the animal whose home is
the Alps and whose pursuit has for
ages been the delight of the mountaineer.
He would have sprung
from crag to crag at my approach and soon disappeared,
had he not been held by a string in the hand
of a boy who expected a few coppers for showing the
animal. This is but one of a hundred ways and
means of begging adopted by the Swiss peasantry.
Of all ages from the infant to extreme decrepitude,
they plant themselves along the highways of travel,
and by every possible pretext seek to obtain the
pence of the traveller. Some are glad to have a poor
cretin or a case of goitre in the family, that they may
have an additional plea to put in for charity. Others
sing or play on some wretched instrument, and the
traveller would cheerfully pay them something to be
silent, that he may enjoy the beauties of the world
around him without the torment of their music. But
the Alpine Horn makes music to which the hills listen.
A wooden tube nearly ten feet long and three inches
in diameter, curved at the mouth which is slightly
enlarged, is blown with great strength of lungs, and
the blast at first harsh and startling is caught by the
mountain sides and returned in softened strains, echoing
again and again as if the spirits of the wood were
answering to the calls of the dwellers in the vales.
The man who was blowing, had but one hand, and after
a single performance, or one blast, he held out that
hand for his pay, and then returned to his instrument,
making the hills to resound again with his wild
notes.

The Rosenlaui valley into which we now enter is
a green and sunny plain, where the verdure is as rich
and the fruits as fair as if there were no oceans of
never melting ice and hills of snow lying all around
and above it. On either side the bare mountains rise
perpendicularly: the Engel-Horner or Angel’s Peaks
sending their shining summits so far into the heavens
that the pagans would make them the thrones of
gods, and the Well-Horn, and Wetter-Horn, bleak
and cold, but now resplendent in a brilliant sun light.
A small but very comfortable inn is fitted up in this
valley with conveniences for bathing, and a few invalids
are always here for the benefit of the air, scenery
and the mountain baths. We rested at the tavern,
and then walked a mile out of the way to see the Glacier
of the Rosenlaui. After a short ascent we
entered a fine forest, and followed the gorge through
which the glacier torrent is rushing: an awful gorge
a thousand feet deep it seemed to me, and if some
mighty shock has not rent these rocks, and opened
the way for the waters that are now roaring in
those dark mysterious depths, they must have been
a thousand years in wearing out the channel for
themselves. A slight bridge is thrown across the
ravine, and a terrible pleasure there is in standing
on it and listening to the mad leaps of rocks which
the peasants are prepared to launch into the abyss,
for the amusement of travellers. I shuddered at
the thought of falling, and felt a glow of pleasing
relief when I was away from the tempting verge. I
never could explain to myself the source of that
half formed desire which so many, perhaps all have,
of trying the leap when standing on the brow of a
cataract, the verge of a precipice, the summit of a
lofty tower. It is often a question whether persons
who have thus perished, designed to commit suicide
or not. It is not unlikely that some are suddenly
seized with this undefined desire to make the trial:
the mind is wrought into a frenzy of excitement,
dizziness ensues, and in a moment of fear, desire and
delirium the irresponsible victim leaps into the gulf.
Many of the fearful passes of the Alps have their
local tragedies of this sort, and I was not disposed
to add another. We soon climbed to the foot of the
glacier. We have come to a mountain of emerald.
The sun is shining on it, at high noon. The melting
waters have cut a glorious gateway of solid crystal:
we step within and beneath the arch. A ledge of ice
affords a standing place for the cool traveller who
may plant his pike staff firmly and look over into the
depths where the torrent has wrought its passage and
from which the mists are curling upwards. The sunlight
streams through the blue domes of these
caverns, long icicles sparkle in the roof, and jewels,
crowns and thrones of ice are all about me in this
crystal cave. Its outer surface is remarkable for
the purity of the ice, its perfect freedom from that
deposit of earth and broken stone which mars the
beauty of most of the glaciers of Switzerland.
Great white wreaths are twisted on its brow, and on
its bosom palaces and towers are brilliant in the sunlight;
and from the side of it the Well-horn and
Wetter-horn rise like giants from their bed, and
stretch themselves away into the clouds. No sight
among the Alps had so charmed me with its beauty
and sublimity. These hills of pure ice, this great
gateway only less bright in the sun than the gates of
pearl, cold indeed, but with flowers and evergreens
cheating the senses into the feeling that this is not
real, it must be a reproduction of fabled palaces
and hills of diamonds, and mountains of light. I am
sure that I do not exaggerate: the memory of it now
that I recur to it after many days is of great glory, such
as the eye never can see out of Switzerland, and the
forms of beauty and the thoughts of majesty, awakened
as I stood before and beneath and upon this
glacier, must remain among the latest images that
will fade from the soul.

Excited by what I had seen and mindless of the
path by which I had ascended, I threw myself back
upon my Alpen-stock and slid down the face of a
long shelving rock, leaping when I could, and gliding
when the way was smooth, and reached the bridge
and the ravine in safety, though the guides insisted
that the longest way around was the surest way
down. We are now at the foot of lofty mountains.
The warm sun is loosening the masses of snow
and ice and we are constantly hearing the roar
of the avalanches. At first it startles us, as if
behind the clear blue sky above us there is a gathering
storm: the sound comes rushing down and
multiplied by echoes themselves re-echoed from the
surrounding hills, the thunder is forgotten in the
majesty of this music of the mountains. We see
nothing from which these voices came. There are
valleys beyond these peaks where perhaps the foot
of man has never trod, and He who directs the thunderbolt
when it falls, is guiding these ice-falls into
the depths of some abyss where they may not crush
even one of the least of the creatures of his care.
It is grand to hear them and feel that they will not
come nigh us. Our path is now so far from the base
of this precipitous mountain that if those snow caps
fall, and we are constantly wishing that they would,
we should be in no peril, and so we ride on with
hearts full of worship, rejoicing in the thoughts of
Him who built these high places, and whose praise is
uttered in the silence of all these speechless peaks,
and shouted in the avalanche in tones which seem to
be reverberated all around the world. One of our
own poets, with a soul in harmony with the greatness
as well as the beauty of this scenery, exclaims in view
of these towering heights—

.nf b
Eternal pyramids, built not with hands,
  From linked foundations that deep-hidden lie,
Ye rise apart, and each a wonder stands!
  Your marble peaks, that pierce the clouds so high,
  Seem holding up the curtain of the sky.
And there, sublime and solemn, have ye stood
  While crumbling Time, o’erawed, passed reverent by—
Since Nature’s resurrection from the flood,
Since earth, new-born, again received God’s plaudit, “Good!”
.nf-
.ce
*
.nf b
Vast as mysterious, beautiful as grand!
  Forever looking into Heaven’s clear face,
Types of sublimest Faith, unmoved ye stand,
  While tortured torrents rave along your base:
  Silent yourselves, while, loosed from its high place,
Headlong the avalanche loud thundering leaps!
  Like a foul spirit, maddened by disgrace,
That in its fall the souls of thousands sweeps
Into perdition’s gulf, down ruin’s slippery steeps.

Dread monuments of your Creator’s power!
  When Egypt’s pyramids shall mouldering fall,
In undiminished glory ye shall tower,
  And still the reverent heart to worship call,
  Yourselves a hymn of praise perpetual;
And if at last, when rent is Law’s great chain,
  Ye with material things must perish all,
Thoughts which ye have inspired, not born in vain,
In immaterial minds for aye shall live again.
.nf-

My mind was full of such thoughts as these, so
finely clothed in Mrs. Kinney’s words, when I met a
party, of ladies and gentlemen, and one of the ladies
was borne along in a chair, with a babe in her arms!
Here was a contrast, and a suggestive sight. It was
certainly the pursuit of knowledge under difficulties,
but I could readily understand that having overcome
every obstacle in her strong desire to see the Alps,
and to see them now, she was enjoying them perhaps
more than any one of the group around her. And I
did not fail to admire the energy of soul that in its
love of nature, and its thirsting after these mighty
manifestations of power and beauty, was equal to all
the difficulties that opposed her way. Whether
ladies may make these difficult passes, which must be
made to see the inner life and real character of Switzerland,
is merely a question of dollars and cents.
The feeblest may be borne as tenderly as this infant
was on its mother’s breast, and the most delicate will
gather health and strength from the bracing mountain
air, and new life will be inspired in the midst of these
exciting scenes. To see Switzerland on wheels is
impracticable. Its brightest glories are hid away in
regions of perpetual ice and snow, where no traveller
passes except to <i>see</i>. The highways of trade are not
here. This is a secret place of the Most High, where
from the foundation of the world, he has wrapt himself
in storms and clouds, and thundered among the
hills, and has been admired only by those who have
come here expressly to behold his works. The solitude
of such scenery adds intensely to the sense of the
sublime. Mountains all around us and God! To be
alone with him anywhere is to be near him: in the
midnight, or on the ocean or the desert, it is a heart-luxury
to feel that only God is near; that his presence
fills immensity, and his Spirit pervades all
matter and all space. But to stand in the midst of
these great Alps, hoary patriarchs, monuments compared
with which the pyramids are children of a day,
is to stand in the high places of his dominions and to
be raised by his own hand into audience with him at
whose presence these mountains shall one day flow
down like water and melt away. <i>Heinrich</i>, my
young German friend, was peopling them continually
with the creatures of Grecian mythology, and his
classic history often led him to speak of the lofty
seats of divinities where ancient poets had planted
the council halls of the gods. I loved to believe that
God had made these hills for himself, and as the people
who dwell among them have no heart to appreciate
them, pilgrims from all lands are flocking here,
and offering the incense of praise at the foot of these
high altars. How they do lead the soul along upward
toward the great white throne! How like that throne
is yonder peak in snowy purity shining now in this
bright sun. It is very glorious, and no human footstep
ever trod the summit. God sits there alone.
Let us admire and adore. He is fearful in praises,
doing wonders! Who is like unto him, a great God,
and a great King!

But this is not getting on with the journey. You
have the privilege of skipping my <i>reflections</i> as you
read; but to travel without reflection, common as it
is, is not my way—and if you would feel the sights
that meet the eye in this world of wonders, you must
indulge me in pausing now and then, to muse. All
this time we have been going steadily up the Great
Scheidek, and have now stopped at a small house,
with the word tavern painted on it in two or three
different languages. An apology for a dinner we got
after waiting for it till an appetite for supper came.
The view from this height into the Grindelwald valley
is enchanting. The descent is so steep that we
were willing to leave the mules and walk down,
holding back by the alpenstock, and resting often to
enjoy the sight, into the valley below. And now we
have come to another glacier, in the midst of a sunny
slope, stretching down into the bosom of verdant pasturage
where herds are grazing and flowers are blossoming,
and women and children are laboring under
a burning sun. It is hard to believe, even as we
stand at the foot of it, that this is everlasting ice: a
segment of the frozen zone let fall into the lap of summer,
and sleeping here age after age, perishing continually,
but renewed day by day, so that it seems
unchanged. It is a wonderful growth and decay;
and the greater wonder to my mind, and one that
does not diminish, is that so much life and beauty can
exist and flourish in the midst of this eternal cold.—Yet
there is a greater contrast even here. We are
coming into the valley, and there another, called the
Upper Glacier lies, and yet that is not to furnish the
contrast of which I speak. It is in the wide and
wonderful difference between this people and their
country! Degenerate, ignorant, begging and demoralized,
this people seem, and indeed are, unworthy of
such a land as this. They have a history, but Switzerland
was, and is not. The race has run down.—Disease
and hardships have reduced the stock, till
now we rarely meet a fine-looking man, never a fine-looking
woman, as we cross the mountains and traverse
the valleys of this noble country.

The vale of Grindelwald, into which we have now
descended, is one of the most fertile, picturesque, and
quiet in Switzerland. It is a place to stay in. The
hotels, of which there are two, are crowded to overflowing.
We sent our guide ahead to get room for
us, but he failed. There was no room for us at
the inn. We paused first at the <i>Eagle</i>, a very good-looking
establishment, and the balcony running across
the front of it was filled with good-looking people—but
there were as many there as the house would
hold, and we had to go on to the <i>Bear</i>. And the
Bear would not let us in. The very best the landlord
could do, was to give us a room with three beds in it,
in a <i>cottage</i> across the way, where we would be quiet
and comfortable. We went over. Up stairs, by as
dark, narrow, dirty, ricketty, dangerous and disagreeable
a passage as I had made among the mountains,
we were led by a tall, skinny, slatternly woman, with
a tallow candle in her fingers, and shown into our
treble chamber. For the first time we were in such
a house as the better class of peasants occupy in
Switzerland. It had been taken by the proprietor of
the hotel, as a sort of makeshift when his hotel was
overflowing—the lower part of it was his bake and
wash house, and this room was reserved for lodgings.
I was worn out with the journey of the day, and glad
enough to stretch myself on any thing that ventured
to call itself a bed. The walls of the chamber around
and above were rude boards, and the bare floor had
been trodden a hundred years without feeling. The
furniture was a mixture of the broken chairs of the
hotel and the superannuated relics of the cottage, an
amusing study, which helped to pass away half an
hour, while our prison keeper, the ugly old woman,
was scaring up something for us to eat. Bread and
milk, with some cheese so strong that we begged her
to take it off, made a frugal repast, but sweet to a
hungry man: this mountaineering does give a man
an appetite—and then he sleeps so well after eating.
Alas! my dreams were short; a band of bloodthirsty
villains attacked me in the dead of night, and for four
hours I fought them tooth and nail. The battle made
real the poet’s description of another scene—

.nf b
“Though hundreds, thousands bleed,
Still hundreds, thousands, more succeed.”
.nf-

How many of the foe found that night a bed of death
in my bed, I cannot say, as we took no account of the
slain, but the conflict was sanguinary and the
destruction of life was immense. The sun rose upon
the battle field, but it was hard to say which was the
victor. Exhausted quite as much by the night’s exertions
as the travels of the previous day, I rose to
address myself to the journey. The rapacious landlord
of the Bear charged us the same price for our
lodgings that was paid by those who had the best
rooms in his house, and I told him we were willing
to pay him for the privilege of hunting in his
grounds, which we had greatly enjoyed for several
hours. He was too slow to take my meaning, but
when he did, he had no idea there was any harm in
a few fleas. All these mountain sides are covered
with the huts of the shepherds, where during a part
of the year a man remains to tend the flocks, and he
takes with him some coarse food to last him during
the months of his stay. The shepherds and their
families live in the midst of their dogs and cattle, and
fleas are no worse to them than they are to us. It
only served to amuse the landlord of the <i>Bear</i>, when
we related to him the sufferings of the night, and
besought him never to expose travellers to such
annoyances again.

The ascent of the <i>Faulhorn</i> is made from Grindelwald.
It is a mountain eight thousand feet high, and
the view from the summit is said to be an ample
reward for the five hours’ walk or ride which is
necessary to gain it. The long and glorious range of
the Bernese Alps stands majestically in sight, and
there are not wanting those who declare the prospect
superior to that which is had on the Rigi. I took it
on trust, and having loftier summits still before me,
was willing to leave the Faulhorn. And I was
willing to leave Grindelwald too—glad to escape the
scene of my midnight sufferings, but I doubt not that
at the <i>Eagle</i> (and not at the Bear) we might have
spent a day or two very pleasantly in this charming
vale. And how soon are these little vexations of life
forgotten. They are worth mentioning only to
remind us how foolish it is to be vexed at trifles,
which in a single day are with the things that happened
a hundred years ago. Thus moralizing and
half sorry that I had made any complaint of my
quarters for the night, I mounted my horse and set
off to cross

.sp 2
<i>The Wengern Alp.</i>

The ride through the vale in the early morning
was refreshing. Parties of travellers were emerging
from cottages where they had found beds, and winding
their way by the bridle paths, in various directions,
on foot and on horseback, all seeking to see the
world of Switzerland, and all enjoying themselves
with the various degrees of ability which had been
given them. We crossed the lesser <i>Sheideck</i>, and
stopped on the ridge of it at a small house of
refreshment to eat Alpine strawberries and milk.
The berries are small and have very little of the
strawberry taste, but are quite a treat in their way.
They were apparently more abundant here than we
had seen them elsewhere, and with plenty of milk
they made a capital lunch. Well for us that we had
the milk before a dirty boy who was playing at the
door when we came up, plunged his mouth and nose
into the milkpan and took a long drink, only withdrawing
when his father wished to dip some out for a
lady who had just arrived. Had she seen the operation,
she would have declined the draught, but where
“Ignorance is bliss ’tis folly to be wise.”

We rested a few moments only at this chalet, and
then pushed on, passing a forest, or the ruins of a
forest, which the avalanches had mown down as
grass. The stumps, and here and there a scraggy
tree were the witnesses of the desolation that had
been wrought. From the height we are crossing we
have one of the most magnificent of Alpine views.
The <sc>Jungfrau</sc> stands before us clad in white raiment,
beautiful as a bride adorned for her husband: in the
sunlight she is dazzling and seems so near to heaven,
and so pure in her vestal robes, that we are willing
to believe the gateway must be there. The name of
this mountain Jungfrau, or the Virgin, is given,
on account of the peculiar beauty and purity of the
peak which until 1812 had never been sullied by the
foot of man. Rising like a pyramid above the surrounding
heights thirteen thousand seven hundred
and forty-eight feet, and seeming to be as smooth as
if cut with a chisel out of solid marble, she stands
there sublimely beautiful, to be gazed at and
admired. Lord Byron has made this region the
scene of some of his most terrible passages, and I
was forcibly impressed as I read them with the
<i>contrast</i>, not the similarity, between his emotions and
my own in the midst of these mountains. Here he
conceived some of those images never read in his
Manfred without a shudder. In his Journal he says
“the clouds rose from the opposite valley, curling up
perpendicular precipices like the foam of the ocean
of hell during a spring-tide—it was white and
sulphury, and immeasurably deep in appearance.”
Then in Manfred he does it into verse:

.nf b
“The mists boil up around the glaciers: clouds
Rise curling fast beneath me white and sulphury,
Like foam from the roused ocean of deep hell
Whose every wave breaks on a living shore,
Heap’d with the damn’d like pebbles.”
.nf-

None but a mind surcharged with horrors, a mind
which all bad things inhabit, could find such images
to convey its emotions in view of these sights of
grandeur, beauty, and glory. The mists were curling
along up the precipices as I have seen incense in
a great cathedral, mounting the lofty columns, and
curling among the arches, a symbol of the praise
that goes up from the hearts of worshippers to the
God of heaven. These white clouds, not “sulphury”—so
far from being suggestive of hell-waves, were
heavenly robes rather, and as the sun now nearly at
noon, was filling them with light, I loved to watch
them, and then look away up to the summit of the
mountains around me, rejoicing in the manifestations
which the King of kings was making of himself in
this dwelling among the munitions of rocks. With
these thoughts full on me as I rode along the verge
of the tremendous ravine that separates the Wengern
Alp from the Jungfrau, we reached a small inn, on
the brow of the ravine, where large parties, chiefly
English people, were ravening for dinner. This
house has been planted here in the Jungfrau, that
travellers may rest themselves in its beauty, and
watch for the avalanches that now and then come
thundering down its precipitous sides. Streams of
water are in some places pouring down. The music
of the fall is constantly heard, and every five or ten
minutes the roar of a snow-slide thunders on the ear.
Few of them are seen. They break away from crags
that are out of sight, and plunge into dark abysses
where the eye of man does not follow them. But this
is just the time of day when we might look for one,
for it is past noon when the sun’s power is the greatest,
and if the great toppling mass which seems to be
holding on with difficulty would but let go its cold
death grasp and come headlong into this mighty
grave at the base of the mountain, it would be a sight
worth coming to Switzerland to see.

We watched and wished, and the more we watched,
the more it would not come. During the half
hour we had sat wrapped up in our blankets, gazing
at the cold snow hills, and shivering in the bleak
winds, the dinner had been in preparation, and despairing
of getting something to see, we determined
like sensible people, to have something to eat. The
long table was filled with hungry travellers, and all
had forgotten in the enjoyment of dinner the wonders
of the Alps, when suddenly the alarm was given,
“<i>Laweenen</i>,” the “<i>Avalanche</i>.” Servants dropped
the dishes and ran, gentlemen and ladies following
them rushed from the table, over chairs and each
other, crowding for the doors and windows: and had
there been danger of a sudden overwhelming of the
house, and the destruction of all the inhabitants, we
could not have fled in greater haste and confusion
than we now did, to see the descending “thunderbolt
of snow.” All eyes were upon one point where a
stream like powdered marble was pouring from one
of the gullies far up the Jungfrau and lodging on a
ledge. It differed in no respect from a stream of
snow, nor indeed from one of water which is perfectly
white in the distance when a small cascade is dangling
from the rocks. Yet we are told, and there is
no reason to doubt that this stream is made up of
vast blocks of ice and masses of snow, dashed constantly
into smaller fragments as it comes “rushing
amain down,” but still weighing each of them many
tons, and capable of dealing destruction to forests and
villages if they stood in its path. We looked on in
silence, and with disappointment mingled with awe.
The stream that had rested for a while on one ledge
now began to flow again, and the roar of the torrent
increased every instant, filling the air with its reverberations,
which were caught by distant mountains
and sent back in sharp echoes, and again in deep
toned voices that seemed to shake the sky. But I
was disappointed. It was just what I did not expect,
although I had read enough of them to be prepared
for what was to come. This was <i>said to be</i> one of the
grandest scenes this season! Of course we believed
it, and report it accordingly. Grand indeed it was,
and when we consider that at least four miles are
between us and the hill side down which it is rushing,
it is not surprising that the masses of ice should
be blended into a steady and liquid stream. Certainly
I prefer to see such a torrent at a distance, to
being sufficiently near it to run any risk of being
buried alive in an icy grave.



.sp 4
.h2 id=ch09
CHAPTER IX.||INTERLACHEN AND BERNE.

.in +3
.ti -3
The Staubach Fall—Lauterbrunnen—Interlachen—Cretins and Goitre—Dr.
Guggenbuhl—Giesbach Fall—Berne—Inquisitive Lady—Swiss Creed—Crossing
the Gemmi—Leuchenbad Baths.
.in
.sp 2

.di i_b_166.jpg 100 170 1.2
The Staubach Fall, nearly a thousand
feet high, is far from being
such a thing of beauty as I had
hoped to find it. It comes from
such a height and has so small a
body of water, that it dissolves into
spray, and falling upon the rocks
gathers itself up again and leaps
down into the valley. Byron compares
it to the tail of the white horse in the Apocalypse.
Wordsworth speaks of it as a “heaven-born
waterfall,” and Murray likens it to a “beautiful lace
veil suspended from a precipice.” It is just at the
entrance of the village of Lauterbrunnen, which
lies in a valley literally gloomy and sublime. The
sides of the mountains that shut it in are precipitous
and so lofty that in winter the sun does not climb the
eastern side till noon, and so cold is it through
the summer, that only the hardiest fruits can be
raised. I counted between twenty and thirty cascades
leaping over the brow of these mountains and
plunging into the valley. In the calm of the evening,
after the sun had ceased to shine in it, I rode
from the village to Interlachen, and thought it the
most mournfully pleasing ride in Switzerland. Others
whom I met, and who passed me on the way, appeared
to regard it as purely delightful, and perhaps
few would find in it as I did, the materials of melancholy
musings.

But all these feelings soon gave way to those of
calm enjoyment, when a weary pilgrimage of a week
was brought to a close in the beautiful village of
<sc>Interlachen</sc>.

We were at the hotel des Alpes; the largest and
best boarding establishment in the village, where, for
a dollar a day the traveller finds every comfort that a
first class hotel affords. It was a very bright day,
and the sun had been shining with a ravishing clearness
on the snow-white breast of the Jungfrau. At
the dinner-table, one of a party of ladies inquired the
meaning of Jungfrau, and being told that it was German
for a young unmarried lady, I ventured to say
that it could not be called the Jungfrau to-morrow.
“And why not, pray,” was instantly demanded.
“Because,” said I, “she is certainly clad in her
bridal robes to-day.”

Beyond all doubt, it is the most beautiful single
mountain in Switzerland. It is a calm, sweet pleasure
to sit and look at her, as a bride adorned for her
husband: white exceedingly; pure as the sun and
snow; bright as the light, and glorious “as the gate
of heaven.” Sometimes its lofty summit seems to be
touching the vault of heaven, and I could easily
imagine that angels were on it, and not far from
home. The wide plain in the midst of which the village
is planted is the theatre of those yearly contests
of strength and skill in which the inhabitants of all
the surrounding hills and valleys engage. On the
overhanging heights on your right hand as we go to
Lauterbrunnen is the Castle of <i>Unspunnen</i>, to which
a legend attaches that I have not time to tell. Byron
is said to have had this scene before him when he
made his Manfred. Instead of telling you the doubtful
story of this old castle, I would rather give you
some account of a modern and more humble house on
the hill.

It is in sight from the plain: not an imposing structure,
but so far above the vale, that you are tempted
to inquire what it is, and with a real pleasure you
are told it is Dr. Guggenbuhl’s Asylum for Cretins.
For weeks we have been pained almost daily with
the sight of these miserable objects. More distressing
to the eye is the victim of the <i>goitre</i>, which is a
swelling on the neck, gradually enlarging with the
growth of the unfortunate subject, till it hangs down
on the breast, and sometimes becomes so heavy that
the miserable individual is compelled to crawl on the
ground. What a strange ordering of Providence it is,
that these beautiful valleys should be infected with
such a disgusting disease. In the higher regions it is
not known, but in low, damp valleys where much
water remains stagnant, it abounds. And so degraded
are many of the inhabitants, that some families
regard it a blessing to have a case of goitre, as it
gives them a claim on the charity of others.

“Cretinism, which occurs in the same localities
as goitre, and evidently arises from the same cause,
whatever it may be, is a more serious malady, inasmuch
as it affects the mind. The cretin is an idiot—a
melancholy spectacle—a creature who may
almost be said to rank a step below a human being.
There is a vacancy in his countenance; his head is
disproportionately large; his limbs are stunted or
crippled; he cannot articulate his words with distinctness;
and there is scarcely any work which he is
capable of executing. He spends his days basking
in the sun, and, from its warmth, appears to derive
great gratification. When a stranger appears, he
becomes a clamorous and importunate beggar, assailing
him with a ceaseless chattering; and the
traveller is commonly glad to be rid of his hideous
presence at the expense of a batz. At times the disease
has such an effect on the mind, that the sufferer
is unable to find his way home when within a few
feet of his own door.”

A young Swiss physician in Zurich, rapidly gaining
fame and fortune in his profession, one day saw a
little <i>cretin</i> near a fountain of water. His heart was
touched with a sudden sympathy, not for the single
unfortunate before him only, but for the thousands
whom he knew to be scattered over his magnificent
country. His noble heart was moved as he made
an estimate of the numbers of his fellow beings in
this helpless and now hopeless condition. In a single
valley where some ten or fifteen thousand people live,
not less than <i>three thousand</i> cretins are found. He
could not redeem them all, but could he not do
something for a few of them—put a new soul into
these bodies—snatch them from the lower order of
creation, from a lower level than the dog or the
horse, and raise them to the scale of man? It was a
noble impulse; it was the beginning of a noble work.
In the virtuous heroism of the hour, he resolved to
give his life to the cause. Such a man could not have
lived even a few years in a community without gaining
the affections of all the good, and when it became
known that the young physician would leave Zurich
to study abroad the subject to which he had consecrated
his powers, the poor people flocked about him,
and held his knees beseeching him not to forsake
them. But his resolution was taken.

His observation and study taught him that in the
more elevated regions of the country, he would find
the only place to locate a hospital, with any hope of
making improvement in the miserable cases on
whom he might make his experiments. Coming to
this lovely vale of Interlachen, and selecting a lofty
and most commanding site, away above the old castle
of <i>Unspunnen</i>, with all the property that he possessed,
and what he could obtain from the charity of
those who were willing to aid him in his doubtful
but philanthropic enterprise, he purchased a tract of
mountain land, and built a house of refuge, a hospital
for idiots.

I rode a donkey up the hill, and with my German
friend Heinrich on one side of me, and my American
friend Rankin on the other, we had a delightful excursion
through the forest; often emerging upon the
side of the hill from which we could look off on one
of the loveliest scenes, then winding our way by a
most circuitous and sometimes a very steep path, we
at last overcame the four miles of travel, and found
ourselves at the door of the Asylum. At our call a
young woman, evidently not a servant, came to the
door and showed us into a plainly furnished sitting
room, while she retired to announce to the Superintendent
that strangers would be pleased to view his
establishment. She returned with the register of visitors
in which we were desired to write our names
and address. She then carried the book to the Doctor,
who soon appeared, gave us a cordial greeting,
and invited us to walk with him through the house.
While we had been sitting there, an uproar was going
on overhead, as if the floor was to be broken through.
Dr. Guggenbuhl led us directly to the room where the
riot was in progress. It was hushed as we entered.
But the cause was apparent. We were in the school-room,
and teachers and pupils were amusing themselves
in the recess with all sorts of diverting and
boisterous plays. Here were thirty-seven idiots, of
various ages from three to thirty, in the way of being
trained to the first exercise of intelligent humanity,
the art of thinking. The teachers are young women,
the daughters of Swiss Protestant pastors chiefly, devoting
themselves without fee or reward, like the Sisters
of Charity, to this painfully disagreeable task.
Around the room are hung large pictures of beasts
and birds, which are designed to catch the attention
of the cretins, and to induce them to make inquiries.
The first indication of a desire to know any thing is
seized upon with avidity and stimulated by every
encouragement. While we were standing there, several
came in with one of the teachers from a ramble
in the woods. They had been for some years in training,
and were now awake to the world around them.
They brought in beautiful wild flowers which they had
gathered, and were delighted to show to us, describing
their varieties, and exhibiting a familiarity with the
study that I did not dream of its being possible for
them to acquire. Feeble as were the exercises of
these poor things, it was a joy to know that they can
be taught, and Dr. G. assured me that he has had the
pleasure and reward of seeing some of them so far
restored to sense, that they may be expected to provide
for themselves, and have some of the enjoyments
of rational beings. He is obliged to use his own
discretion in the admission of pupils: his house will
contain but his present number, and hundreds must
be denied his care, to whom he would gladly extend
it, if the rich would give him the means. He devotes
all his own property to their relief, and expects to
give his life to this self-denying work. In reply to my
inquiries if his labors were acknowledged by medical
men abroad, he referred me to a score of diplomas that
had been sent to him from all the leading Societies
on the Continent of Europe and in England, but I saw
none from America. Does not my country know, and
does it not delight to honor a man whose philanthropy
and genius are alike deserving the admiration of the
world?

Among the poor idiots in this institution is one, the
son of an English Lord, sent far away from his native
land, in the hope, faint indeed, that the wonderful skill
of this heroic man may open the eyes of this child’s
understanding. What indeed is wealth, and title, and
power, to a fool? And O how happy they, who have
joyous, bright and knowing little ones, though only
bread and milk to eat, and little of that.

The good doctor followed us to the brow of the hill,
and with us admired the lovely landscape away below,
the richly tilled plain—the white cottages scattered
over it, and in its midst the beautiful village—wide
sheets of water around which the mountains stand
and look down, solemn and grand, in their everlasting
silence and gray heads: and then we pressed his
hands long and earnestly, asking God to bless him, a
noble specimen of a Christian physician.

While at Interlachen we made excursions to the
Geisbach Falls, which have the preference in my
view decidedly before all others in Switzerland. We
also made a trip to Berne, and passed a few days at
the <i>Couronne</i> Hotel, one of the best in the land.—Every
body has read of the Bears of Berne, and there
are many lions there to see, in the Museum and out.
The view of the Bernese Alps is worth the journey
to Switzerland. I saw them at sunset, in glory unrivalled
and indescribable.

Returning from Berne in the diligence, an elderly
English lady sitting in front of me, and hearing me
converse with my friends, presumed I must be a countryman
of her own, and opened a catechism as follows—

<i>Lady.</i>—“How long since you left England, Sir?”

<i>I.</i>—About two months, Madam.

<i>Lady.</i>—“When do you return, Sir?”

<i>I.</i>—I hope in the Spring, Madam.

<i>Lady.</i>—“Where do you spend the winter?”

<i>I.</i>—In Syria.

<i>Lady.</i>—“Good Lord, what a traveller you are!”

She took a pinch of snuff, and I resumed my notes
and remarks with my companion. She listened, and
grew impatient to get hold of something by which to
learn who we were. She at last ventured to come toward
the point by asking,

“In what part of England do you reside, Sir?”

I am not an Englishman, Madam.

<i>Lady.</i>—“Bless me, and of what country are you,
pray?”

I am an American.

<i>Lady.</i>—“O you are, are you? Well, I would not
have thought it. Would it be an <i>indiscretion</i> for me
to ask you what is your name, Sir?”

I gave her my name of course, but she was not satisfied.
“Will you,” said she, “have the goodness to
give me your name in writing?”

I handed her my card, for which she thanked me,
and then added, “I know that you are making notes,
and will write a book, and I shall hear of you, &c.,”
and so she chatted on, amusing me not a little with
her loquacity.

We returned to Interlachen, and here a German
lady who was travelling with her family, begged me
to allow her son, a student of Heidelberg, to join my
party, to make an excursion of a few days, and meet
her at Geneva. To this I assented, as it would increase
our number to four, and be quite agreeable.
With this escort of young men, two Germans and one
American, I set off at daylight in the morning, to
make the Gemmi Pass. Along the shores of Lake
Thun and by the castles of Wimmis and of Spietz,
we entered the beautiful vale of Frutigen, where the
shepherds and flocks, with their crooks and their dogs,
gave us a sweet picture of pastoral life. At a little
tavern at which we halted for lunch, I found the following
<sc>Creed</sc>, framed and hung up in the dining-room.
It was in French.

.in +2
.ll -2
“I believe in the Swiss country, the brave mother
of brave men, and in Freedom only begotten daughter
of Helvetia, conceived in Grutli, by the patriot in
1308 who suffered under the aristocrats and priests,
was crucified for many centuries, died and was buried
in 1814; after sixteen years was again raised from
the dead, came back into the bosom of true patriots,
from hence she shall come to judge all the wicked. I
believe in the human spirit which was delivered from
ignorance by knowledge and raised by Education. I
believe in a holy general brotherhood of the oppressed
in Spain, Portugal, Poland and Italy, the communion
of all patriots, the destruction of all tariffs, and the
life everlasting of republics, Amen.”
.ll
.in

This is scarcely better than blasphemy; and it is
probably one of the formulas of faith on which the
Continental conspiracies are formed. On and up, the
road led us to some beautiful falls of water, and between
perpendicular masses of rock that stood as if
split asunder to give us a passage through. We
reached Kanderstey in the middle of the day, and
met parties returning from the Gemmi, who advised
us against going on, as there was every prospect of a
coming storm. We were determined however to
press forward. I got a mule and a guide, and the
young men were ready to walk. We set off in good
spirits, but as soon as we struck into the defile which
led up the hill, the mists began to thicken around us,
and it was impossible to call it any thing but rain.
Three hours of steady climbing brought us to the
wretched inn of Schwarenbach, which Werner makes
the scene of a fearful tale of blood. We were wet
and cold, but found no fire, and the set of men and
women inside were too dirty and savage to tempt us
to spend the night with them, as we were now heartily
disposed to do, if the quarters had been safe. I preferred
to run the risk of getting over the mountain to
staying here. This was the unanimous vote, and
again we plunged into the storm. Dreary and dismal
was the way, along by the side of the Lake; the Dauben
See, and in the midst of broken masses of stone,
strewed in wild disorder. We were near the summit
when the rain became snow and hail, and the winds
swept fearfully over us, so that I could not sit upon
my mule. I had scarcely dismounted, before he
slipped on a ledge and fell; I might have broken my
neck had I fallen with him. No signs of a human
habitation are on this lonely height. And if there
were, we could not find them in this driving storm.
There are no monks to come with their dogs to look
us up, if we lose the way. We must go over and
down on the other side, or perish. To return is impossible.
Among the scattered fragments of rocks, no
path was to be seen; and we frequently feared that
we had lost our way. I followed the guide to the
brink of a precipice two thousand feet deep, and perpendicular.
Down the face of this solid rock leads
the most wonderful of all the pathways in Switzerland.
So narrow as just to allow two mules to pass
as they meet, the zigzag path is cut out of the solid
rock, and covered with earth and stones to prevent
our feet from slipping. The mule, by a wonderful instinct,
walks upon the extreme outer verge, lest in
making the sudden turn his load should strike the
rock and tumble him off.

Sheltered somewhat from the rain by the overhanging
rocks, we pursued our weary way to the bottom;
and then, through mud and mire and darkness,
drenched to our skins, we reached the Hotel Blanche
at Leukenbad.

This is the great bathing establishment of Switzerland.
It is higher above the sea than the summit of
any mountain in Great Britain. Again and again it
has been swept away by avalanches, and is now protected
by a strong wall above the village. The water
bursts out from the ground immediately in front of our
hotel, and supplies the baths, which are twenty feet
square, and in which a dozen or twenty men and
women may be seen, for hours, sitting with their
heads only out of water, reading the newspapers, or
books, on little floats before them; playing chess; or
whiling away the time in some more agreeable manner.

The next morning, by a most romantic pathway
along the borders of a vast abyss, the scene of a
bloody battle in 1799, we pursued our journey to the
valley of the Rhone, and taking the Great Simplon
road, through Sion, went to Martigny.



.sp 4
.h2 id=ch10
CHAPTER X.||MONKS OF SAINT BERNARD.

.in +3
.ti -3
The Char-a-banc—the Napoleon Pass—Travellers in winter—Monks—Dogs—Dinner—Music—Dead-house—Contributions—a
Monk’s Kiss.
.in
.sp 2

.di i_b_181.jpg 100 170 1.2
The weather was threatening when
we set off from Martigny, and
we had many forebodings that the
dogs of Saint Bernard might have
to look us up, if the storm should
come before we reached the hospice.
A char-a-banc, a narrow carriage in
which we sat three in a line with the
<i>tandem</i> horses, was to convey us to
the village of Liddes. On leaving the valley and
crossing the river Drance, we soon commenced the
ascent, by the side of the raving torrent, with majestic
heights on either hand. A terrible tale of devastation
and misery, of sublime fortitude and heroic courage,
is told of the valley of Bagnes, where the ice had
made a mighty barrier against the descending waters,
which accumulated so rapidly that a lake seven thousand
feet wide was formed, and a tunnel was cut
through the frozen dam with incredible toil, when it
burst through and swept madly over the country
below, bearing destruction upon its bosom. In two
hours some four hundred houses were destroyed with
thirty-four lives and half a million dollars’ worth of
property. We were four hours and a half getting up
to Liddes, where we had a wretched dinner, and then
mounted horses to ride to the summit of the pass.

The rain, which had been falling at intervals all
the morning, was changed into snow as we got into
colder regions. The path became rougher and more
difficult, and it was hard to believe that even the
indomitable spirit of Napoleon could have carried an
army with all the munitions of war, over such a route
as this. Yet the passage now is smooth and easy
compared with what it was when in 1800 he crossed
the Alps.

Leaving the miserable village of Saint Pierre,
through which a Roman Catholic procession was
passing, we had an opportunity of refusing to take off
our hats, though some of the peasants insisted on our
so doing. We came up to heights where no trees
and few shrubs were growing: flowers would sometimes
put their sweet faces up through the snow and
smile on us as we passed, and I stopped to gather
them as emblems of beauty and happiness in the
midst of desolation and death.

.il id=i04 fn=i_b_183.jpg w=500
.ca THE HOSPICE OF ST. BERNARD.

The most of the travellers on their upward way,
were mounted on mules, but a few were on foot, and
among these was one of the monks of the Hospice,
who with a couple of blooming Swiss damsels, was
returning to his quarters from a visit below. We
passed one or two cottages, and a house of stone
which has been built away up here for the reception
of benighted travellers, and after a toilsome journey
of four hours, just at sunset we came upon the Hospice,
a large three-story stone house, on the height of
the mountain more than eight thousand feet above
the sea, the highest inhabited spot in Europe. To
shelter those who are compelled to cross this formidable
pass in winter, when the paths are far down
underneath the snow, and travellers are in danger of
being overtaken by storms, or overcome with fatigue
and sinking in the depths of the drifts, this <i>hospice</i>
has been founded and sustained. In the summer
season, as now, it is merely a large hotel, where pleasure
parties are drawn by curiosity to visit the monks
and their establishment, famed the world over for its
hospitality and self-denying charity. The snow was
falling fast as we ascended the rugged pass, and at
least six inches of it lay on the ground at the top. I
was glad to have reached it, in the midst of such a
storm. It gave me a vivid picture of the hospice
when its walls and cheerful fires and kind sympathies
are needed for worn and exhausted pilgrims. Such
were some who arrived here this evening. Father
Maillard, a young monk, received us at the door, and
after pleasing salutations conducted us to our chambers,
plainly furnished apartments with no carpets on
the floor, but with good beds. The house was very
cold. As the season is not yet far advanced, perhaps
their winter fires were not kindled, and as no fuel is
to be had except what is brought up from below on
the backs of horses, it is well for the monks to be
chary of its use. Our host led us to the chamber in
which Napoleon slept when he was here, and my
young German friend occupied the same bed in
which the Emperor lay. He did not tell me in the
morning that his dreams were any better than mine,
though I had but a humble pilgrim’s.

After we had taken possession of our quarters, we
were at liberty to survey the establishment. We
began at the kitchen, where a small army of servants
were preparing dinner, over immense cooking stoves.
The house is fitted up to lodge seventy guests, but
oftentimes a hundred and even five hundred have
been known to be here at one time. To get dinner
for such a host, in a house so many miles above
the rest of the world, is no small affair. We came
up to the Cabinet, enriched with a thousand curious
objects of nature and art, many of them presented by
travellers grateful for kindness they had received, and
some of them relics of the old Romans who once had
a temple to Jupiter on this spot. The reception
room, which was also a sitting and dining room,
was now rapidly filling up with travellers, arriving
at nightfall. One English lady, overcome with
the exertion of climbing the hill on horseback,
sank upon the floor and fainted as soon as she was
brought in. A gentleman who had but little more
nerve in him, was also exhausted. The kind-hearted
priests hastened to bring restoratives, and speedily
carried off the invalids to their beds—the best place
for them. It was quite late, certainly seven in the
evening before dinner was served, and with edged
appetites, such as only mountain climbing in snow
time can set, we were ready at the call. The monks
wait upon their guests, girded with a napkin, taking
the place of servants, and thus showing, or making a
show of humility. It was not pleasant to my feelings
to have a St. Augustine monk, in the habit of his
order, a black cloth frock reaching to his feet, and
buttoned, with a white band around his neck, and
passing down in front and behind to his girdle, now
standing behind me while I was eating, offering
to change my plate, and serving me with an alacrity
worth imitating by those whose business it is to wait
on table. And when I said, “thank you, father,” in
Italian, it was no more than the tribute of respect
due to a gentleman of education and taste, whose
religion had condemned him to such a life as this.
Father Maillard presided at the table, and was very
conversable with the guests; cheerfully imparting
such information as we desired. Of the eight or ten
monks here, not one of then speaks the English language;
but the French, Italian and German are all in
use among them. I inquired of Father Maillard if
those terrible disasters of which we formerly read so
much, travellers perishing in the snow, are of frequent
occurrence in late years. He told me that
rarely, I think he said never, does a winter pass,
without some accident of the sort. Hundreds of the
peasantry, engaged in trade, or for the sake of visiting
friends, will make the pass, and though the paths
are marked by high poles set up in Summer, these
are sometimes completely buried under mountains of
snow, and the poor traveller loses his way and sinks
as he would in the sea. He also told me that after
his brethren reside in this cold climate for a few
years, they find their health giving way and they are
obliged to retire to some other field of labor, and
usually with broken constitutions. Yet there are
always some who are willing, at this hazard, to
devote the best years of their life to the noble work
of saving the lives of others. Honor to the men,
whether their faith be ours or not.

Our dinner, this being our only dinner where
monks were our hosts and servants, is worth being
reported. We had no printed bill of fare; but my
young friends helped me to make one out the next
day as follows: 1. Vermicelli soup. 2. Beef a la
mode. 3. Potatoes. 4. Roast Lamb. 5. Roast Veal
stuffed. 6. Dessert of nuts, figs, cheese, &c. This
with plenty of wine, for which the cellars of St. Bernard
are famous, was dinner and supper enough for
any, certainly we were prepared to do it justice, as to
a table spread in the wilderness.

After dinner, the party now numbering fifty or
more, assembled from the two or three refectories, in
the drawing-room, and the many languages spoken
gave us a small idea of Babel. One of the priests
took his seat at a poor piano, sadly out of tune; and
commenced playing some lively airs. The two Swiss
maidens who had come up with him to visit the hospice,
stood one on each side of him, at the piano,
and sang with great glee to his music, and at the
close of every song, the party applauded with hearty
clapping of hands, that would have pleased Mario
and Grisi. I asked Father Maillard, who stood by
me all the evening, and with whom I formed a very
pleasant acquaintance, if they had such gay times
every night. He said that during the summer travel
they had many pleasant people who enjoyed themselves
much during their brief visit. We certainly
did. And at an hour later than usual we retired to
our chambers. It was so cold that I had to take my
Glasgow blanket and wrap myself well up in it before
turning in, but I slept soundly, and was awakened
by the Convent bell, before daylight, calling the
monks to morning prayers. I rose, and hastily dressing,
hurried to the chapel. The priests, the servants,
and thirty or forty muleteers who had come with the
travellers were on their knees on the stone floor of a
pretty little chapel, devoutly worshipping. None of
the travellers were here: but those who entertained
and served them, had left their beds before dawn to
pray.

Breakfast was not prepared for all at once, but
each person as he was ready called for his coffee and
rolls, and they were immediately brought.

The celebrated dogs of St. Bernard were playing
in the snow as I stepped out after breakfast: a noble
set of fellows they were, and invested with a sort of
romantic nobility, when we thought of them ploughing
their way through drifts, leading on the search for
lost travellers, and carrying on their necks a basket
of bread and wine which may be as life to the
dead.

The dead! Come and see them. Close by the
hospice is a square stone house, into which are carried
the lifeless bodies of those who perish in the snow,
and are found by the dogs, or on the melting of the
snow in the summer. They cannot dig graves on
these rocky heights, and it is always so cold that the
bodies do not rot, but they are placed in this charnel-house
just as they are found, and are left to dry up
and gradually to turn to dust. I counted thirty
skulls lying on the ground in the midst of ribs, arms
and legs; and twenty skeletons were standing
around the sides of the room, a ghastly sight. In
one corner a dead mother held the bones of her dead
child in her arms: as she perished so she stood, to
be recognized if it might be, by anxious friends, but
none had ever come to claim her. What a tale of
tender and tragic interest, we read in these bones.
Sad, and sickening the sight is, and I am willing to
get away.

Father Maillard walked with me into the chapel,
showed me the paintings, and the monument of Gen.
<sc>Dessaix</sc>, and when I asked him for the box into
which alms are put, he pointed to it, and hastened
away that he might not see what I put in. They
make no charge for entertaining travellers, but every
honest man will give at least as much in the way of a
donation as he would pay at a hotel.

My friend, as I now call him, Father Maillard,
embraced me tenderly, and even kissed me, when I
bade him farewell, and mounting my horse, set off
at eight in the morning, with a bright sunshine, to
descend the mountain.



.sp 4
.h2 id=ch11
CHAPTER XI.||FIRST SIGHT OF MONT BLANC.

.in +3
.ti -3
The Host of Martigny—Vale of the Drance—Mount Rosa—Tete Noire—Col de
Balm—The Monarch of the Alps.
.in
.sp 2

.di i_b_193.jpg 100 170 1.6
“Bring me for my ride to-morrow the
<i>easiest</i> of all the mules in Martigny,”
I said to Antonio, on the evening
after my return from the pass of St.
Bernard. I was knocked up nearly,
done over certainly, and contemplated
another trip with a sort of shrink.
But there is nothing in Martigny to
see, after you have looked at the
measures of the various heights to which the water
has risen in times of inundation, to which these valley-villages
are sadly subject. So in the morning—a
bright glad day it was—Antonio came in to tell me
that he had a lady’s mule for me, so easy I should be
in danger of falling asleep on his back; but this hazard
I was willing to risk. The past few days of walking
and riding had made me so stiff in the joints that
I was awkward about mounting, and my host of the
<i>Poste</i>, a huge man as well as an admirable publican,
put his hands under my shoulders, and with all ease
placed me astride of the beast in a moment. The
feat was received with applause by a score of rough-looking
peasants, guides, beggars, &c., of whom there
are plenty in this unwholesome valley; and we were
off for the vale of <sc>Chamouni</sc>.

Following up the river Drance, we turned off to
the right, and slowly worked our way by a bad pathway,
meeting people now and then coming down
with their truck to sell below. One man had a log
of wood with a string tied around it, dragging it
behind him, women with baskets of knick-knacks, all
intent upon driving a trade in a very small way, but
industriously, and that commends a people to you
wherever you see them. On the left were terrible
precipices, along the edge of which the path often
led us; till we came to a lovely reach of pasturages,
a wide plain where cottages were scattered, and
flocks were grazing—a peaceful scene in the midst
of rugged mountains. Crossing this plain we ascended
the Forclaz, and from the ridge looked back
on the valley of the Rhone. The great road over
the Simplon stretches for many a long mile up this
vale, and Sion in the distance is seen; and around
us more than fifty snowy peaks of the Alps with the
morning sun gilding their crowns. Among them,
but in beauty above them all is Mount Rosa, admired
even more than Mont Blanc; and now that peculiar
tint of pink was spread all over it with uncommon
lustre. “Great glory” was the exclamation which
often rose to my lips as from one and another point
of observation I looked at these white mountains,
and the “excessive brightness” blazing from every
summit. But we cannot always be on the mountain
tops looking at still higher mountains. We descend
into the valley of Trient, into which a glacier extends,
bringing its perpetual ice into the bosom of a sweet
vale, where green meadows were rejoicing, and the
peasants were busy with a scant harvest.

We have our choice of two roads from this valley
to Chamouni. The one by the <i>Tete Noire</i> is the easiest,
and we resolved in the freshness of our strength
to take this road first, and having pursued it to the
<i>Tete</i>, to enjoy the view, and then come back and go
by the Col de Balm. By this extra effort we accomplished
a noble day’s work, and were richly repaid for
the fatigue. In no part of Switzerland are the precipices
grander and more fearful, and for an hour we
rode along the edge; and when the rocks shoot out
over the path, a tunnel or gallery as they call it, is
cut through; and near by a rude inscription cut into
the rock celebrates an English lady who contributed
something to improve the pass. The <i>Tete</i> or Head,
Black Head, is given to the dark mountain, whose
overhanging rocks present a gloomy front which has
given its name to this narrow defile. Hundreds of
feet down in the dark abyss on whose verge we are
travelling, the Trient is roaring and leaping along its
rocky way to the Rhone. At every turn in our zigzag
single-file march, we are tempted to pause and
study the scenes of sublime and terrible that break
upon us: for when we are in no danger ourselves,
there is a fascination in looking upon scenes where
the fearful makes us shudder. But we returned from
these out-of-the-way places and were at noon in the
valley of Trient again, gazing at the lofty crags from
which Escher de Berg fell in 1791, when, like many
more fortunate travellers, he disregarded the advice
of his guides, and lost his life in showing his temerity
and strength in making a leap.

The ascent of the Col de Balm has been described
by the most of travellers as one of the most difficult,
and we are told it seems incredible that mules can
work their way up where travellers are obliged to
climb by the roots and shrubs. But over this hill
lies the road to Chamouni, and over this hill we are
going. For an hour we did have hard work, and
Heinrich and I amused ourselves with digging up
some Greek roots, while the mules were slowly
picking their way among the stones up a path sometimes
all but perpendicular. And when at last we
emerged from the forest, and reached the high pasturages,
we had still a long hour of travel before us,
through the open country.

Our party had been enlarged during the morning
by the accession of others on the same route, and as
we were nearing the ridge, there began to be quite
a strife among us as to whose eyes should have the
first sight of Mont Blanc. For a month we had been
on and under the mountains of Switzerland; gazing
successively upon higher and yet higher heights; and
when the Jungfrau, and Mount Rosa, and other of
the lesser kings of the country had stood before us,
we could not believe that any other could be a monarch
in the midst of such mountains as these. But
Mont Blanc was always to come. It was the last, for
we had seen them all, rejoiced in them all, looked up
through them all to Him who holds them in his hand,
and counts them only as dust in the balance; and
still one more wonderful than they was just before
us, on the other side of the ridge, and in a few moments
more would stand up and meet us face to face.
Over the pasturages there were many paths, and we
scattered in our attempts to gain upon each other.
The mules seemed to catch somewhat of the inspiration
of the occasion, and did their best, till we came
out together, neck and neck, and we stood on the
summit, with the vale of Chamouni, the steeple-like
<i>Aiguilles</i> of Charmoz and Midi, Argentiere and
Verte, and others shooting up cold and black, sentinels
around the hoary old monarch of the Alps lying
there with a crown of mist on his head, which rises
as we look at it, and Mont Blanc is before us.

“Disappointed of course,” you say. Perhaps so.
It does not stand in the middle of a plain, and rise
right up like a pyramid, till its apex touches the
blue sky. In fact, you must be assured by your
guide that the round summit to the South of two or
three that seem to be higher is actually Mont Blanc,
the loftiest of them all; and as you sit here and take
in the wonderful panorama of the glaciers, needles,
and majestic summits, the grandeur gradually steals
into your soul and takes quiet possession. I wanted
to be still and absorb the scene, which I should soon
leave and never see again. I would expose my heart
to it, till a sort of daguerreotype was made, which I
could carry with me, and look at when I should sit
down at Niagara, or among the White Hills of New
Hampshire.

.il id=i05 fn=i_b_199.jpg w=345
.ca CHAMOUNI AND MT. BLANC.

“’Pon my honor, ’tis very fine,” said a very red-faced,
red-whiskered Englishman, who had followed
me to my solitary stand-point. “What do you think
of it? Is it not fine: very fine?” And so he kept
chattering on, till I crept off gently a few rods, and
again essayed to be alone. But my tormentor followed
up, and renewed his attack, as if it were impossible
for him to see the prospect with any satisfaction
unless he could keep talking to somebody all the
while. A small house of entertainment stands here,
and while my Englishman went in to have some
brandy and water, I managed to get a few moments
of undisturbed possession of the scene. Of all the
points of observation in this country of stupendous
scenes, there is no one that furnishes a more sublime
and glorious spectacle than this. It is the crowning
hour of the tour of Switzerland. I felt that I had
reached the climax, and with reverence I could make
a parody on the words of old Simeon. All my feelings
have been of reverence in this country. The
Alps and God have been around me for a month, and
my soul has been rising in high converse with Him
who covers these hills with his presence, and is glorious
in the solitudes of these vales. And now as I
look off at these glistening glaciers, so many miles of
resplendent ice, a <i>Mer de Glace</i>, a sea of glass, lying
among those mountains, and extending far down into
the vales below; when I look up at these precipitous
peaks actually piercing the clouds, and then at the
solemn brows of those giant mountains, where the
foot of man has seldom trod, and the glory of God is
forever shining, I feel a sense of the presence of the
Infinite and Eternal as no other scene has ever yet
awakened in my soul. With the disciples on another
Mount, I feel “it is good to be here.”

That was my first sight of Mont Blanc. The day
could not have been more favorable, and that evening
as the sun went down, I stood in the vale of Chamouni
and saw his last rays lingering on the summit, the
stars trooping around it at night, and the next morning
before sunrise I was out again to see the first
beams of day as they kissed his brow.

.nf b
Awake, my soul! not only passive praise
Thou owest; not alone these swelling tears,
Mute thanks and secret ecstacy! Awake,
Voice of sweet song! Awake, my heart, awake!
Green vales and icy cliffs, all join my hymn.—
Thou first and chief, sole sovereign of the vale!
O struggling with the darkness all the night,
And visited all night by troops of stars,
Or when they climb the sky, or when they sink;
Companion of the morning-star at dawn,
Thyself earth’s rosy star, and of the dawn
Co-herald! wake, O! wake, and utter praise!
Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in earth?
Who filled thy countenance with rosy light?
Who made thee parent of perpetual streams?
And you, ye five wild torrents fiercely glad,
Who called you forth from night and utter death,
From dark and icy caverns called you forth,
Down those precipitous, black, jagged rocks,
Forever shattered, and the same forever?
Who gave you your invulnerable life,
Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy,
Unceasing thunder, and eternal foam?
And who commanded, (and the silence came,)
“Here let the billows stiffen, and have rest?”—
Ye ice-falls! ye that from the mountain’s brow
Adown enormous ravines slope amain!
Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice,
And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge!
Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!
Who made you glorious as the gates of heaven
Beneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sun
Clothe you with rainbows? Who, with living flowers
Of loveliest hue, spread garlands at your feet?
God! Let the torrents, like a shout of nations,
Answer, and the ice-plains echo, God!—
God! sing ye meadow-streams with gladsome voice!
Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds!
And they too have a voice, yon piles of snow,
And in their perilous fall shall thunder, God!—
Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost,
Ye wild goats sporting round the eagle’s nest,
Ye eagles, playmates of the mountain storm,
Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds,
Ye signs and wonders of the element,
Utter forth, God! and fill the hills with praise.—
Once more, hoar mount, with thy sky-pointing peaks,
Oft from whose feet the avalanche, unheard,
Shoots downward glittering through the pure serene,
Into the depth of clouds that veil thy breast.—
Thou too, again, stupendous mountain thou
That, as I raise my head, awhile bowed low
In adoration upward from thy base,
Slow travelling, with dim eyes suffused with tears,
Solemnly seemest, like a vapory cloud,
To rise before me,—rise, O! ever rise,
Rise like a cloud of incense, from the earth!
Thou kingly spirit throned among the hills,
Thou dread ambassador from earth to heaven.
Great hierarch! tell thou the silent sky,
And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun,
Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God.

.rj
<i>Coleridge.</i>
.nf-



.sp 4
.h2 id=ch12
CHAPTER XII.||GENEVA.

.in +3
.ti -3
A good House—Prisoner of Chillon—Calvin—Dr. Malan—Dr. Gaussen—Col.
Tronchin—The Cemetery.
.in
.sp 2

.di i_b_205.jpg 100 170 1.2
The <i>Hotel des Bergues</i> stands on
the Lake of Geneva, just where the
“arrowy Rhone” shoots out from
its bosom. This is one of the finest
hotels in Europe, and with the
<i>Trois Couronnes</i> at Vevay, may
fairly challenge comparison with
any other. I brought up at this
house from the Vale of Chamouni.
The dismal rain through which I had been riding on
a chill autumn day, had increased to a storm, and the
old town, that is gloomy enough at any time, was
peculiarly uninviting on its first appearance. But
this city I had longed to visit, even from the time
that I read in Cæsar’s Commentaries, “the farthest
town of the Allobroges and the nearest to the frontier
of the Helvetii, is <sc>Geneva</sc>.” Julius Cæsar took
possession of it, and the remains of his erections are
to be seen at the present day.

The Christian religion was introduced in the fifth
century, and bishops appointed by the Pope by
degrees became lords temporal as well as spiritual,
which they are very apt to do as fast and as far as
they can get the power. The right of naming the
Bishops, about the year 1400, fell into the hands of
the ducal house of Savoy, and their creatures became
despots of the reddest dye. Their oppressions grew
to be so intolerable that the citizens rebelled. A
bloody persecution ensued. The chapter of its history
is among the darkest of the records of popery.
The deeds of patriotic heroism which were brought
out have scarcely a parallel. One citizen cut his
own tongue out with a razor, lest the torture should
compel him to betray his friends. Bonnivard became
the chained prisoner of Chillon. But his story is not
to be passed over without being told.

.in +2
.ll -2
“In 1530, <i>Francois Bonnivard, Prior of Saint
Victor</i>, was seized on the Jorat by a band of marauders,
whose chief was the Sieur de Beaufort, Governor
of Chillon, for his bitter enemy, the Duke of Savoy.
As a punishment for his heroic defence of the liberty
of Geneva, he was condemned by the petty tyrant to
perpetual captivity in the castle. Here he remained
during seven years, buried alive in a dungeon on a
level with the waters of the lake, and fastened by a
chain round his body to a ring still remaining on one
of the pillars. Irritated to agony by sad reflections
on his own and his adopted country’s slavery, he
wore away the stone floor beneath his feet, by constantly
pacing to and fro, like a wild beast, from end
to end of its cage. At length, in 1536, the Bernese,
with their allies of Geneva, effected the conquest of
the Pays du Vaud. Chillon was the last place which
held out for Duke Charles V. of Savoy, but the Bernese
having laid siege to it by land, while the Genevese
gave an assault by water, the garrison was
forced to a surrender, and Bonnivard, with several
other prisoners, was restored to liberty. He had left
Geneva a Roman Catholic state, under the domination
of the House of Savoy, he found her a free republic,
openly professing the reformed religion. The citizens
were by no means backward in recompensing him for
past sufferings; in June, 1536, he was admitted to
the highest privileges of the State, and presented with
the house previously inhabited by the Roman Catholic
Vice-General, besides an annual pension of two
hundred crowns of gold, so long as he chose to dwell
there.”
.ll
.in

Then came the Reformation. The people, long
sick of Roman despotism and disgusted with Romish
wickedness, embraced the doctrines of the Reformers,
and Geneva became doubly free. John Calvin came
in 1536, and Protestants from other countries fled to
Geneva as an asylum from persecution. His genius
and austere morals, contrasted with the dissoluteness
of the Romish Clergy, gave him unbounded influence
in the state. He was called the Pope, and Geneva
the Rome of Protestantism. John Knox was here
with him, and hundreds of distinguished men whose
principles made it necessary for them to fly from
England, France, Spain and Italy. Through the
seventeenth century the city had rest, and made
great progress in arts and science; the resort of men
of learning, and distinguished for the industry and
thrift of its inhabitants. The eighteenth century was
marked with insurrections, distractions, civil wars
and revolution. The scenes of Paris were performed
in Geneva. The blood of her best citizens was shed
by the hands of the mob, in the name of liberty.
Then the city was grafted upon France, and so
remained till 1813, when with the aid of Austria, it
became once more a Genevan Republic. The next
year it became one of the Cantons of Switzerland,
but the city held on to its aristocratic constitution.
Still it flourished in peace and progress, till the contest
between the radical and conservative parties
broke out in 1841, and resulted in the revision of the
constitution, but not in the establishment of confidence
and quiet. In 1846 a fierce struggle occurred,
still fresh in every memory, which ended in the
establishment of the present constitution, on a democratic
basis, and in giving an impulse to the attempt
to overturn the thrones of despotism in Europe; a
noble but abortive effort, which failed in 1848.
Geneva, under John Calvin, called Europe to religious
liberty in 1536, and the people heard the call.
If another John Calvin had been in Geneva in 1848,
we should not have been compelled to deplore the
miscarriage of that struggle in Europe for Constitutional
liberty, which shook every government, but
eventuated in giving a charter to the people of but a
single State.

I had been wandering a month among the mountains
of Switzerland, and had not had a line from
home. The bankers closed their offices at four
o’clock and it was nearly five when we arrived.
Disappointed and grieved I returned to the Hotel,
the more sad as to-morrow is to be the Sabbath, and
I shall not be able to get my letters till Monday. It
occurred to me that something might have been sent
for me to the care of a venerable and well-known
clergyman of Geneva, whom I should not fail to see,
and I would therefore call at once upon him, without
ceremony. I soon found his gate. A woman at the
lodge answered the bell and took my card up to the
house with a message to ask if anything had been
left for me; for it was late and Saturday evening,
and I would not intrude upon the pastor at such an
hour. In a few moments the good man stood on the
walk, under the trees, with a lantern in his hand; a
tall old man, with long grey hair hanging in curls,
and a countenance shining with love. He put out
his hands and throwing one arm around me drew me
to him, as if I were his only son, and kissed me. It
was the Rev. Dr. <sc>Cæsar Malan</sc>, and a welcome such
as a pilgrim in a strange land can feel. Many
pleasant hours I had with his interesting family, now
reduced by the frequent inroads which my countrymen
have made upon it. No less than three of them
have repaid this good man’s hospitality by carrying
off his daughters; and the last but one had been
taken but a few days before I arrived. These deeds
were done by clergymen from America, and when I
was asked in a social gathering of Genevan ladies, if
my countrymen were obliged to go abroad for their
wives, I could only say that no one would blame them
for taking a wife at a venture when they come to
Geneva.

The gentle <sc>Gaussen</sc>, author of an excellent work
on the Inspiration of the Scriptures, charmed me
with his sweet Christian spirit, and his broad-hearted
charity, so happily in contrast with much of the
foreign half-reformed religion, which in England
and France still abounds. D’Aubigne was not at
home.

Col. Tronchin has a lovely residence out of town
and overlooking the lake. He sustains at his own
charges an asylum for convalescing invalids, one of
the most interesting charities I have ever seen. He
took me through the establishment, and I felt, as I
never did before, what a blessedness it is to have
wealth and a heart to use it for the sake of those
who are suffering. A young woman sitting at the
door and enjoying the sunshine, pale and thin, but
smiling with the prospect of returning health, rose,
when he stopped and asked her if she was getting
well, and blessed him for her comforts, with looks
and words of gratitude that must have been a rich
reward. This home for the poor is charmingly situated
in the midst of shade-trees, with walks and
beds of flowers, and furnished with everything to
promote the health and comfort of the patients, who
come here when discharged from the hospitals as no
longer requiring medical aid, and are yet unable to
labor. In the pure air of this rural abode, and surrounded
with all the good things which this
benevolent man has provided, twenty-five invalids
are supported at his expense, and as soon as one
departs, another is ready and waiting to come in.
Indeed it occurred to me that many of them would
be slow to get well if they must be banished from
this lovely spot to a cellar or garret in a crowded
street, to toil and sicken again.

Begging in the streets is forbidden, and in the
whole of Switzerland you may distinguish between
the Protestant and Catholic cantons, by the fact that
few beggars are in the former, compared with the
crowds that infest the latter, annoying and often disgusting
the traveller. The morals of the two religions
are as strikingly contrasted. The Catholics accuse
the Genevese females of prudery, and Sismondi tells
us that the young women are “pious, well brought
up, prudent and good managers.”

In the cemetery I found the grave of Sir Humphrey
Davy and Pictet and other distinguished men,
foreigners and citizens, but no man knows where
Calvin is buried. He forbade any monument to be
erected to mark the spot, and so it has passed from
the knowledge of man. But in the old cathedral,
standing on the spot where once stood a pagan
temple of Apollo, is the pulpit in which Calvin and
Knox and Beza, Farel and Viret, and a long line of
glorious men, have preached: and this noble building,
presenting many fine specimens of architecture
and sculpture of the middle ages, now wrested from
the hands of Popery, is a fitting monument to the
memory of the Reformers. In the public library
founded by <i>Bonnivard</i>, the Prisoner of Chillon, I
saw the manuscripts and portraits of all the Genevan
Reformers, four hundred of the MSS. being Calvin’s,
and a collection of literary curiosities of unrivalled
interest. There is little else to see in Geneva. Its
attraction lies in its historic interest, its delightful
situation, and good society. In and around it, all
along the borders of Lake Leman, are sites made
famous by the residence of men and women of taste
and letters.



.sp 4
.h2 id=ch13
CHAPTER XIII.||PICTURES IN SWITZERLAND.[#]

.in +3
.ti -3
Waterfalls—Constance—Zurich—William Tell—Glaciers—the Monarch.
.in
.sp 2

.di i_b_214.jpg 100 170 1.2
The waterfalls of Switzerland are
among its crowning glories; and of
these the falls of Schaffhausen are
altogether the most imposing. The
European, who has never worshiped
at the foot of our own great cataract,
looks down from the base of the
Castle of Lauffen, after paying a
franc for the privilege of getting to
a standing-place; or he looks up from the opposite
shore, where is reared the Castle of Worth, and he
pronounces it magnificent. Mrs. Bull does not hesitate
to declare it charming! Mr. Murray, in that
everlasting Red book, without which no Englishman
could <i>do</i> Europe—as this is the authority on which
alone he ventures to admire any thing in art or
nature, just as he swears only by the <i>Times</i>—Mr.
Murray, in his never-to-be-dispensed-with Hand-book,
informs him that this is “the finest cataract in
Europe,” and, of course, in his opinion, it is the finest
in the world. He leads the trembling traveller to
the verge of the awful precipice, where, covered with
spray, he may enjoy the full grandeur of this “hell
of waters,” and then he adds, “It is only by this close
proximity, amidst the tremendous roar and the uninterrupted
rush of the river, that a true notion can be
formed of the stupendous nature of this cataract!”
The Rhine here leaps over the rocks into an abyss of
fifty feet. The river is cloven in twain by a tower of
rock in the centre of the stream, and the spray rises
from its base in an eternal cloud. Picturesque and
beautiful the falls certainly are, but grandeur can
hardly be affirmed of them.

It was my first day of travel in Switzerland when
I reached them—a warm day in the summer of last
year. A month of hot weather in Dresden and
Munich had been too much for the restoring powers
of the waters of Baden-Baden, and it was like waking
up in a new world of beauty, with a new soul to love
it, to find myself in the midst of this Swiss scenery—the
breezes of its snow hills and glaciers fanning me,
and its peaks pointing skyward, where there are temples
and palaces whose every dome is a sun and every
pinnacle a star. But I could not be satisfied till,
with the aid of two stout fellows, I made my way
through the boiling waters nearly to the foot of the
central tower, and there, in the toppling skiff which
threatened to tip over on very gentle occasions, I
looked up at the mass of waters tumbling from above.
The rocks were partially covered with green shrubbery,
and a scraggy tree stretched its frightful arms
into the spray; but I was not disposed to climb, as
some have done, to the top of the cliff, for the sake of
enjoying the scene.

A curious old town is Schaffhausen, so named from
the boat-houses, or skiff-houses, which were here
erected, for the falls made this the great terminus of
navigation on the Rhine. We had come by diligence
from Basle, and after passing a night in Weber’s
excellent hotel at the falls, we came on in the morning,
and spent an hour or two looking at the ancient
architecture of the town, whose buildings are adorned
with such fanciful and extravagant carvings as would
hardly be deemed ornamental in the Fifth Avenue.

A very small specimen of a steamer received us
now, and bore us up against a strong current. The
banks on either side were green with vineyards, now
loaded with unripe fruit, and in the midst of the
vines the dressers were at their work. On the sloping
hillsides the neat cottages of the Swiss peasantry
were scattered, making a picture of constant
beauty through which we were passing. Among our
passengers were a dozen German students, with their
knapsacks on their backs, making a tour of Switzerland,
the most of which they would perform on foot,
gathering health and strength as they trudged on
through the mountain passes, and studied the glacier
theories on the spot.

It was noon when we arrived at Constance, on the
lake of the same name, and a city to be forever associated
with the trial and martyrdom of John Huss
and Jerome of Prague—a city on which the curse of
shedding innocent blood seems resting to this day.
In the loft of a long building, now standing near the
water’s edge, was gathered a Council, in the year of
our Lord 1414, over which the Emperor Sigismund
presided, and attended by some five hundred
princes, cardinals, bishops, archbishops and professors,
who deposed two popes and set up another, and
crowned their four years’ labor of love by condemning
to the flames those martyr men of God, whose names
are this day fragrant in the churches of a land that
was not known when Huss was burning. In the
midst of a cabbage garden outside the gate, yet
called the Huss Gate, we were led to the spot where
he suffered; and returning, we called at the house in
which he was lodged before he was brought to trial.
But the streets of the city had grass growing in
them; for of the forty thousand inhabitants who once
filled these houses but seven thousand remain! Tenements
are now tenantless that once were thronged
with life. It was sad to wander by daylight through
the streets without meeting a living being; and this
was my experience here, and afterward in the island
city of Rhodes. A chain stretched across the street
sustained a lantern in the centre—a very convenient
substitute for lamp-posts, if there are no carriages to
pass, but a very awkward arrangement for a city
infested with omnibuses.

Another day and the diligence brought us to
Zurich, on the lake of the same name—the most
thriving town in Switzerland. Here the lion-hearted
reformer, Zwingle—the soldier of the cross, who perished
on the field of battle—preached in the Cathedral,
and dwelt in a house which is still standing and
known as his. Here Lavater, the physiognomist, had
a home and found a grave, over which the flowers
are blooming. His was a lovely and loving spirit.
Switzerland, strange to say, has not given birth to
poets, but she is the mother of many noble sons, and
her scenery has inspired the souls of the sons of song
from other climes, who have wandered here and
meditated among her lakes and hills.

Coming into Zurich, as we descended into the vale
that holds the city and the lake, I had been charmed
with the view; and now at the close of the next day,
we were led to the height of one of the old ramparts,
to behold a Swiss sunset, and certified to be “one of
the finest scenes in Switzerland.” The elevation, no
longer needed for purposes of defence, has been
tastefully transformed into a flower-garden. Enormous
shade trees are crowning the summit, and on
rude benches the romantically-disposed people,
citizens and strangers, are seated. As we came to
the top of the hill, the god of day was coming down
from the midst of a dense cloud, like a mass of molten
gold distilled into a transparent globe. His liquid
face was trembling; but the world below sent back a
smile of gladness as the king in his glory looked
down upon it. The nearer summits seemed to catch
the brightness first, and then in the distance others,
invisible before, stood forth in their majesty, as if
called into being by his quickening beams. At our
feet was the lake, like a sea of glass. The spires of
the city and the sloping hills were reflected from the
mirror; and all over the country side, as far as the
eye could reach, were thousands of white cottages
and villas, the abode of wealth and peace and love—sweet
Swiss homes, rejoicing in the sunshine as they
send up their evening psalm of praise. It was a
scene to make its impress on the memory, and to
come up again and again in the far-off dreams of
other lands and years.

To climb the Rigi, to spend the night on the top,
to see the sun go down and get up in the morning,
these are among the things to be done in a tour of
Switzerland, and all these we set off to do, taking the
steamer at Zurich and touching at Horgen, crossing
over to Zug, and by steamer again to the little village
of Arth, which lies at the foot of the hill we are to
ascend. As we were approaching the shore, the
reflection of the Rigi from the lake was so vivid and
perfect that we could study the mountain in the
water with as much satisfaction as a good-looking
man contemplates his own person in a glass. Every
particular cliff and crag, individual trees, and winding
paths, and torrent beds, which we could see
above, were defined with marvelous precision below.
On landing, we dispatched a fleet mountain-boy
ahead of us to engage beds at the house on the summit;
for so many were with us on board the steamer,
and so many more were doubtless climbing from the
other side at the same time, that we were likely to
have a bed on the floor unless we stole a march on
our fellow-travellers. Most of them pushed upward
from Arth, while we kept upon the plain for a mile
or more to the village of Goldau, once the scene of a
terrible catastrophe, the gloom of which still seems
to be hanging over the ill-fated spot. The Rossberg
Mountain is on the east of it, five thousand feet high,
and in the year 1806 a mighty mass of it, some three
miles long and a thousand feet thick, came sliding
down into the valley, burying four hundred and fifty
human beings in one untimely, dreadful grave.
Travellers, like ourselves, who were making their
way among these romantic regions, were suddenly
overwhelmed in the deluge of earth and stones, and
the places of their burial are unknown to this day.
This event happened fifty years ago; but the broad,
bare strip on the mountain side, which no verdure
has since clad, is an ever-present record of the awful
fall; and the great rocks that are lying on the
opposite side of the valley, and away up the Rigi,
are present witnesses of the messengers of death that
came down in their wrath on that memorable day.
The village church was then buried with the people
who had been wont to frequent its courts, and nothing
of it was ever found but the bell, which was carried
a mile or more and now hangs in the steeple of
another little temple filled with memorials of the
ancient calamity.

Here we began the ascent of the Rigi. Some on
horses, some on mules, more on foot, two or three
ladies in sedan chairs, each borne by four stout men—a
very lazy way of getting up hill, where health
as well as pleasure is sought in travel; but every one
choosing his own mode of ascent, and none having
wings, we set off, as motley a party of mountain-climbers
as ever undertook to scale a fortress. Four
hours’ steady travel, pausing only to look in occasionally
at the chapels in which the Catholic pilgrims
perform their prayers as they ascend to the church
of “Mary in the Snow,” which is about half-way up,
brought us to the top where as yet the sun was half
an hour high. And now, for the first time, did we
know that we were in Switzerland. Not because we
are on a very lofty mountain top—for the Rigi is
not quite six thousand feet high—but we are on a
mountain which stands so isolated that it affords us a
better view than any other point, however elevated,
of the mountains, the lakes, valleys, and villages,
that make this land so peculiar for its beauty and
grandeur. On the west, where we gazed with the
deepest emotion as soon as we planted our feet on the
summit, we saw the hoary Mount Pilatus, and at its
base the Lake Lucerne, the most romantic of the
Swiss lakes, and not exceeded by the scenery of any
lake in the world. The city of Lucerne sends up its
towers and battlements, and the whole canton of that
name is spread out, with the River Reuss flowing
over its bosom. At our feet, nestling under the Rigi
and on the borders of the lake, is the village of
Kussnacht, and the chapel of William Tell, marking
the spot where the intrepid patriot pierced the
tyrant’s heart with his unerring arrow. And now
the descending sun is pouring a flood of golden glory
over all this broad expanse of lake and forest, plain
and towering hills, whose peaks are touching the
blue skies, gilded with last rays of declining day.
Far southward we look away upon the mountains of
Unterwalden, of Berne, and of Uri, whose snow-clad
summits and blue glaciers are in full view, the
beautiful Jungfrau rising, queen-like, in the midst
of the magnificent group of sisters in white raiment.
The eastern horizon is supported by the snowy peaks
of the Sentis, the Glarnisch, and the Dodi; and the
two Mitres start up from the midst of that region
where Tell and his compatriots conspired to give
liberty to their native land. All around us are lakes,
so strangely nestled among the mountains that they
seem to be innumerable, peeping from behind the
hills and forests. And now the sound of the village
bells, and the Alpine horn, and the evening psalm,
comes stealing up the rugged sides of the Rigi, and
we are assured that, in this world of ice, and snow,
and eternal rocks, there are human hearts all warm
and musical with the love of Him whose is the
strength of the hills.

We had a short night’s sleep, for what with a late
supper and a crowd of people who had no beds, our
rest was broken; and just as the dawn began, a monster,
with a long wooden horn, marched through the
halls, startling the sleepers with its blast, and forbidding
sleep to come again. We had been warned over
night that, at this signal, we must wrap up and run if
we would see the sun rise; and as a posted notice in
French forbade the use of the bed-blankets, we hurried
on our clothes, and in a few moments stood, with
a hundred others, like the Persian fire-worshippers,
gazing eastward to catch the first glimpse of the coming
king! Not long had we to wait. Another blast
of the wooden trump gave notice of his approach, and
presently a coal of fire seemed to be glowing in the
crown of the mountain directly in front of us. It grew
till the whole peak was ruddy with the glow, and
then the great globe rose and rested on the summit!
From this, as from a fount of light new-created and
rejoicing in the first morning of its being, the streams
of glory were poured out upon the world below and
around us. Peak after peak, and long mountain
ranges and ridges, domes and sky-piercing needles,
and fields of fresh snow, and forests of living green,
began to smile in the sunlight. In the space of a
brief half hour the world was lighted up for the business
of another day, and when we had had a cup of
wretched coffee and a bit of sour bread, we “marched
down again.”

The steamer from Lucerne, on its daily trip from
that city, touches at Weggis, where we awaited its
coming, and were soon in the midst of the most
romantic scenery in Europe. From the water’s edge
the mountains rise perpendicularly. Broken into
ridges, clothed with green forests or smooth pastures,
and now and then sheltering a hamlet in the openings,
the mountains stand around this lake with a majesty
too impressive for words. We have come into the
heart of a land of heroes. The waters of this lake are
like the life-blood of martyrs. This little village of
Gersau, on a sloping hillside, shut out from the rest
of the world by these mountain ramparts, was an
independent democracy of four hundred years, though
its domains were only three miles by two! Here, at
Brunnen, are painted, on the outer walls of a building
on the waterside, the effigies of the three great men
who, with William Tell, achieved the independence
of Switzerland in 1815. Across the lake, away up
among the ledges of the rocks, there lies a little plain,
an <i>oasis</i> in the wilderness, where, in the dead of night,
the three confederates met and laid their plans for the
deliverance of their country from the yoke of a foreign
oppressor. That spot is Grutli. It is a holy place,
for liberty was there conceived, and every patriot,
from whatever land he comes, is thrilled when his eye
looks on it. Yet not so sacred is Grutli as the land
upon the opposite side of the lake, where the steamer
slackens its speed as we are passing a little chapel
that is built upon the margin of the lake. This
chapel marks the spot where William Tell escaped
from the boat in which he was a prisoner on his way
to Gessler’s prison at Kussnacht. It does savage violence
to one’s better feelings to be told that no such
man as Tell was ever living in this land we are now
exploring. He has been our ideal of a patriot chieftain
from childhood, and we are not to be cheated out
of him without a struggle. Skeptical critics may tell
us, as they do, that Tell is a myth; but we have history
for our faith to lean upon, and tradition tells us
that this chapel was built in 1388, thirty-one years
after the hero’s death, and in presence of one hundred
and fourteen persons who had known him when he
was living. Such is our faith, and as we are passing
by the chapel, to which, even unto this day, the Swiss
make an annual pilgrimage and have a solemn mass
performed within its narrow walls, and a sermon
preached, we will tell the story of Tell.

When the year 1300 was coming in, Albert of Austria
was ruling with a rod of iron over the dwellers in
these mountains. He sent magistrates among them
who exacted heavy taxes which they were unable to
pay, and imposed arbitrary and cruel punishments
upon them on slight occasions. Arnold, a peasant of
Uterwalden, was condemned for some insignificant
offence to give up a yoke of fine oxen, and the servant
of the bailiff seized them while Arnold was plowing
with them, and said, as he drove them off, “Peasants
may draw the plow themselves.” Arnold smote the
servant, breaking two of his fingers, and fled. The
tyrant seized the father of Arnold and put out both
his eyes! Such cruelties became too many and too
grievous to be borne. Even the women—brave
souls!—refused to submit, and the wife of Werner
Stauffacher said to her husband: “Shall foreigners
be masters of this soil and of our property? What
are the men of the mountain good for? Must we
mothers nurse beggars at our breasts, and bring up
our daughters to be maid-servants to foreign lords?
We must put an end to this!” Her husband was
roused, and went to Arnold, whose father’s eyes had
been put out, and Walter Furst. These three held
their meetings for counsel at Grutli. Afterward each
of them brought ten men there, who bound themselves
by a great oath to deliver their land from the
oppressor. This oath was taken in the night of November
17, 1307. Not long afterward the bailiff,
Herman Gessler, when he saw the people more restless
and bold, resolved to humble them. He placed
the ducal hat of Austria upon a pole, and ordered
every one who passed by to bow down in reverence
before it. William Tell, one of the men who had
taken the oath at Grutli, held his head proudly erect
as he passed, and when warned of the danger of such
disobedience stoutly refused to bow. He was seized
and carried before the bailiff, who was told that Tell,
the most skillful archer of Uri, had refused to pay
homage to the emblem of Austrian power. Enraged
at Tell’s audacity, Gessler exclaimed,

“Presumptuous archer, I will humble thee by the
display of thine own skill. I will put an apple on the
top of the head of thy little son; shoot it off, and you
shall be pardoned!”

In vain did the wretched father plead against such
cruelty. He could pierce the eagle on the wing, and
bring down the fleet chamois from the lofty rocks, but
his arm would tremble and his eyesight fail him
when he took aim at the head of his noble boy. But
his remonstrances were all in vain. The boy was
bound to a tree, and the apple set upon his head. The
strong-hearted father took leave of his son, scarce
hoping that he could spare him, and rather believing
that his arrow would in another moment be rushing
through his brain. With a prayer for help from Him
who holds the stars in his hand, and without whose
providence not a sparrow falls, the wretched father
drew his bow. The unerring arrow pierced the apple,
and the child was saved. Another arrow fell from
underneath the garment of the archer as the shout of
the people proclaimed the father’s triumph.

“What means this?” demanded the tyrant.

“To pierce thy heart,” replied Tell, “if the other
had slain my son!”

Gessler ordered the man to be seized and bound,
and hurried off to the dungeon he had built at Kussnacht.
Fearing to trust the guards with their prisoner—for
he knew not how far the spirit of rebellion
might have spread—Gessler embarked in the boat
with them, and hastened off lest the people should
rise to the rescue of their countryman. The lake was
subject then, as it is now, to sudden and fearful tempests.
The wind rose and swept the waves over the
boat, defying the skill of the boatmen, and threatening
their speedy destruction. Tell was known for his
skill with a boat as well as with a bow. Tyrants are
always cowards, and when the tyrant saw that his
own men were not able to manage the craft, he
ordered Tell’s bonds to be removed that he might
take the helm in his hand. Steering the boat as near
to the projecting rock of Axenberg as she could run,
he suddenly leaped from it to the ledge, and the force
of his leap sent the boat backward upon the lake.
The prisoner was free. Pursuit was hopeless. He
was at home among the mountains. Every path was
familiar to him. But vengeance would be taken on
those dearer than his own life. He resolved to preserve
them by the death of the monster who had
sought to make him slay his own son. With the speed
of the chamois he sped his way across the mountains
to the very place where he was to have been carried
in chains, and there awaited the coming of Gessler.
The tyrant came but to die. The arrow of the patriot
drank his heart’s blood. Then the inhabitants of the
mountain fastnesses flew to arms. The minions of
Austria were seized, and with a wonderful forbearance
were not slain, but sent out of the country under
an oath never to return. The King Albert came to
subdue the rebels. On his way he was murdered by
his nephew and a band of conspirators, whom he had
thought his friends. He expired at the wayside, his
head being supported by a peasant woman who found
him lying in his blood. The children of the murdered
man and his widow, and Agnes the Queen of Hungary,
took terrible vengeance on the murderers, and,
confounding the innocent with the guilty, shed blood
like water. Agnes was a woman-fiend. As the blood
of sixty-three guiltless knights was flowing at her
feet, she said: “See, now I am bathing in May-dew!”
One of the most distinguished of the enemies
of the King, the Knight Rudolf, was, at her
orders, broken on the rack, and while yet living was
exposed to the birds of prey. While dying, he consoled
his faithful wife, who alone knelt near him, and
had in vain prostrated herself in the dust at the feet
of Agnes, imploring her husband’s pardon. But the
war of oppression went on. An army marched into
Switzerland, and to the many thousands of their
invaders the men of Grutli could oppose only thirteen
thousand. But they were all true men, and at Morgarten,
on a rosy morning in 1315, they met the
enemy and routed them utterly, after such deeds of
valor as history scarcely elsewhere has recorded.
This gave freedom to Switzerland. Of that struggle
the first blow was struck by William Tell when he
smote Gessler to the earth.

At the head of the Lake of Lucerne, and a few
miles above the chapel of Tell, is the village of
Fluelen, at which we rest only long enough to get
away, for the low grounds, where the River Reuss
comes down into the lake, breeds pestilence, and the
inhabitants give proofs of the unhealthiness of the
place by the number of cretins and goitred cases
that are found among them. Two miles beyond is
the old town of Altorf. Lapped in the midst of
rugged mountains, which shut down closely on every
side, it is secluded from the world that is familiar
with its name. Here, on this village green, in front
of the old tower, a fountain, surmounted by a statue,
marks the spot where William Tell shot the apple
from the head of his son. The tree on which the
ducal hat was hung by Gessler, and the same to
which the boy was bound, is said to have remained
there three hundred years after the event. The
<i>tower</i> dates back of that time, as records still in
existence prove it to be more than five hundred and
fifty years old. To this day the hunters of Uri come
down to Altorf to try their skill with the rifle, which
has now taken the place of the bow and arrow.

A few miles further on we came to the River
Reuss, in which William Tell was drowned while
attempting to save the life of a boy. There was
something sublime in the thought that a man whose
name is now identified with the patriots and heroes
of the world should finally lose his life in the performance
of a deed that requires more of the self-sacrificing
spirit than to scale the walls of a fortress
and perish in the midst of a nation’s praise.

The men of this region are spoken of as the finest
race in Switzerland. We had no reason to think them
remarkable; but the women, who were making hay
in the meadows while the men were off hunting,
were certainly very good-looking for women who
work in the fields in all weathers, braving the storms
of rain and snow, tending the sheep and cattle on the
hillsides, and carrying the hay on their backs to the
barns.

As we pressed our way up the great Saint Gothard
road, frowning precipices rise a thousand feet high,
black, jagged rocks, almost bare of vegetation, shutting
out the sunlight, and making a solitude fearful
and solemn, its silence rarely disturbed but by the
passing traveller and the ceaseless dashing of the
river, which, instead of flowing, tumbles from ledge
to ledge. In the spring of the year the avalanches
make the passage still more fearful.

Twenty or thirty thousand persons travel over this
pass every year; and to keep the current in this
direction, the cantons of Uri and Tessin built this
splendid carriage-path, as smooth as a floor, and so
firm in its substructures as to resist the violence of
the storms and the swollen torrents that so often rush
frightfully down these gorges. Twice was the work
swept away before this road was completed, which, it
is believed, will stand while the mountains stand.
So rapid is the ascent, that the road often doubles
upon itself, and we are going half the time backward
on our route. Sometimes the road is hewn out of
the solid rock in the side of the precipice, which
hangs over it as a roof, and again it is carried over
the roaring stream that is boiling in a gulf four
hundred feet below. Toiling up the gorge, with the
savage wildness of the scenery becoming every
moment more savage still, we reach the Devil’s
Bridge. More than five hundred years ago, an old
abbot of Einsiedeln built a bridge over an awful
chasm here; but such is the fury of the descending
stream, the whole mass of waters being beaten into
foam among the rocks that lift their heads through
the cataracts—such is the horrid ruggedness of the
surrounding scenery, and so unlikely does it appear
that human power could ever have reared a bridge
over such a fearful chasm, it has been called, from
time immemorial, the Devil’s Bridge. A Christian
traveller would much prefer to ascribe its origin to a
better source; for whatever miracle it required, we
might refer it to the skill and goodness of Him who
hung the earth upon nothing, and holds the stars in
his hand. We were quite cold when we reached the
bridge, and, quitting the carriage, walked over it to
study its structure, and enjoy the grandeur of a scene
that has hardly an equal even in this land of the
sublime and terrible. At this spot the River Reuss
makes a tremendous plunge at the very moment
that it bends nearly in a semicircle, and a world of
rocks has been hurled and heaped in the midst of the
torrent, to increase the rage and roar of the waters,
arrested for a moment only to gather strength for a
more terrific rush into the abysses below. We
approach the parapet, and look calmly over, and
there, far below us, is another bridge, which, becoming
useless by age and the violence of the elements,
was superseded by this new and costly structure.

We crossed the bridge and soon entered the long
<i>Gallery of Uri</i>—a tunnel cut through the solid rock—a
hard but the only passage, as the torrent usurps
the whole of the gorge, and the precipice above
admits no possible path overhead. A hundred and
fifty years ago this hole was bored, and before that
time the only passage was made on a shelf supported
by chains let down from above, on which a single
traveller could creep, if he had the nerve, in the
midst of the roar and the spray of the torrent in the
yawning gulf below him. To add to the gloom and
terror of the scene about us, a storm, with thunder
and lightning broke upon us as we emerged from this
den, and right speedily set in while as yet we had no
shelter. We had come into an upper valley, a vale
five thousand feet above the level of the sea, where
no corn grows, though the land flows with milk and
honey. The cows and goats find pasture at the foot
of the glaciers, and the bees, who find flowers even
in these realms of eternal snow, make their nests in
the stunted trees and the holes in the rocks. At Andermatt,
a village among the mountains, we come
upon an inn whose many lighted windows invited us
to seek refuge from the increasing storm, and we
entered a room already thronged with travellers who
had reached it before us, many of them coming down,
and they were now rejoicing over a smoking supper.
They made us welcome, and in the good cheer we
soon forgot the fatigues and the perils of the most exciting
and exhausting day we had had in Switzerland.

“Blessed be he who first invented sleep,” the
weary traveller says, with Sancho, whenever night
comes, and wherever, if he is so happy as to have a
place wherein and on to lay his head. Sleep, that
will not come for wooing to him who wastes his hours
in idleness at home, now folds her soft arms lovingly
about him, kisses his eyelids, whispers gentle memories
in his soul, and dreams of the loved and the distant
are his as the swift night-hours steal away. The
nights are not long enough; for when the first nap is
past the sun of another day is struggling to get over
the hill-top and look down into the vale of Andermatt!

We might pursue this St. Gothard highway over
into Italy, but we have not yet seen Switzerland.—Hitherto
we have been traversing only the great
roads of travel. Now we will strike off into the regions
where wheel carriages have never yet been
seen. The Furca Pass leads off from the St. Gothard
road, and with a guide to pilot us, we struck into a
narrow defile. Away above us the blue glacier of
St. Anne was shining in the morning sun, and now
we are at the foot of a beautiful waterfall that leaps
from its bosom into the vale below. Here are the
remains of an awful avalanche of rocks and earth that
came down a few years since, on a little hamlet clustering
on the hillside. The inhabitants fled as they
heard it coming, but a maiden, tending a babe, refused
to leave her precious charge, and could not fly
with it as rapidly as the rest. She perished with it in
her arms. Soon we came to a mountain stream which
crossed our path, and the bridge had been swept
away by an avalanche only the very night before.
There were no signs of danger now, and we could
scarcely believe the stories that were told us of the
sudden destruction wrought by these thunderbolts of
snow, and ice, and earth, which are the terror of
these regions. The village we slept in last night is
protected by a forest of trees so arranged as to receive
and ward off the slides; but they come at times with
such force as to cut off the trees, and bury everything
in undistinguished ruin.

This <i>pedestrianism</i> is very well to boast of at home,
and for those who are used to it and fond of it, it
may be a very agreeable mode of travel; I confess I
was tired of it the first day, and took to the horse as
decidedly a better, as it certainly is an easier method
of transit. It was just about as much as I could do to
<i>walk</i>, and think of the number of miles we had gone,
and had yet to go, with scarcely any spirit to enjoy the
romance of the scenery, the glaciers and waterfalls,
the precipices and snowy summits that were around
me; and groaning all the while with the burden of
locomotion. It was another thing altogether to sit
on a horse, and folding one’s arms, to look upward
and around rejoicing in the wonders of God’s world,
and breathing in with the mountain air, the rich inspirations
of the scene.

We are now so far up in the world that the snow,
though the month of August is closing, is lying by
the side of the pathway, while the wild flowers, in
bright and beautiful colors, are blooming in the sun,
and close to the edges of these chilling banks. On
our right hand the Galenstoch glacier lies among the
peaks of naked rock that, like the battlements of
some thunder-riven castle, shoot upward eleven thousand
feet into the clear blue sky. We are among the
ice-palaces of the earth. I hug my great coat closely,
as the cold winds from these eternal icebergs search
me, and in a few minutes reached the inn at the summit
of the Furca Pass. Snow-clad summits of distant
mountains glistened in the noonday sun, and
blue glaciers wound along and down the gorges, and
so far above the valleys were we now that it seemed
like a world without inhabitants, desolate, cold, and
majestic, in its solitude and icy splendor.

The descent was too rapid for safe riding, and, giving
the horse to the guide, who would lead him
around, I leaped down the steep declivity, and soon
found myself in a lovely vale. Turning suddenly
around a promontory, a scene of such grandeur and
beauty burst upon our sight as we had not yet encountered,
even in this land of wonders. An ocean lashed
into ridges and covered with foam, then suddenly
congealed, would not be the spectacle! Freeze the
cataract of Niagara and the rapids above it, and let
them rise a thousand feet into the air; congeal the
clouds of spray, the falling jewelry; pile up pyramids
and minarets, and columns, and battlements of ice,
and then, at each side of this magnificent scene, set
a tall mountain, with green pasturage on its sides,
and its head crowned with everlasting snow, and you
have some faint image of the Glacier of the Rhone!
Travellers have called it the Frozen Ocean of Switzerland.
But it is more than this. And yet out of
its bosom, its cold but melting heart, the River Rhone
is flowing. This is its source. The daring adventurer
may follow it up, beneath the blue arches and
between the polished walls, till he finds himself far
away in these caverns of ice, where no living thing
abides. And here he learns the great design of a beneficent
Creator in forming these glaciers. The snows
of winter are here stored up, and, instead of being
suddenly melted in the spring, and then sent down
in torrents to devastate the lands through which the
overwhelming currents would be borne, they are
melted by degrees, and led by channels through these
mountain passes into the river beds that water all the
countries of Europe! For this great purpose Switzerland
was built! It has been lightly said that this
Swiss country looks as if it had been the leavings of
the world when creation was finished, and the refuse
material that could not be conveniently worked in
had been thrown in dire confusion, heaps on heaps,
into this wilderness of jagged rocks, and shapeless
mountains, and disordered ranges of hill and vale—impracticable
for man or beast—a rude, wild land,
doomed to perpetual poverty, and existing only to be
an object of curiosity to the traveller. But we find
it to be the great fountain of living waters, pouring
its inexhaustible streams into the wide and many
lands below, carrying fertility and beauty over millions
of acres, and food and gladness to countless
homes.

A hard hill to climb was the Grimsel. Sometimes
I rode, but more frequently I was content to toil upward
on my own feet, without taxing the jaded horse
with my weight to be added to his own. But when
we reached the summit, and overtook other parties
who were before us, and were overtaken by yet others
coming up behind, we formed a picturesque procession
of some forty or fifty pilgrims, who wound
slowly along the banks of the <i>Dead Sea</i>—a lake that
lies away up among these frozen heights, and derives
its name from the fact that it was once the grave of
a multitude of soldiers who perished in the fight in
these mountain fastnesses.

The vale of the Grimsel is beneath us, and just before
the sun sets we reach the Hospice, and eagerly
ask for lodgings. On the borders of a little lake, in
the bottom of a narrow valley, surrounded by almost
perpendicular rocks, stands this solitary house,
in former years inhabited by friendly monks who
made it their pious care to entertain the traveller and
furnish free hospitality to the poor. Now it is a
hotel, and a very poor one at that, where you may
get a supper, and a bed, and a large bill in the morning.
This is a dreary spot now, and in the winter
more fearful it must be.

In the morning we found the path that led us out
of the valley to the Glaciers of the Aar. The mountain
of earth, rocks, ice and snow that we encountered
put to flight all ideas we had formed of a glacier.
We seemed to have come to a vast heap of
sand, or to the <i>debris</i> brought down by an avalanche,
but from the base of it a torrent was rushing of a
dirty milky hue, and out of its front we could see rocks
of blue ice projecting. Now and then a mass of earth
or a huge boulder would be hurled along down the
precipice.

And this mighty mass of ice, decaying at the front
and pressed down from above, is slowly moving onward
at the rate of some twelve inches a day. If a
stream of water running across it cuts a wide seam, so
that the mass is suddenly brought down, the shock
will throw up the ice in ridges, and in various fantastic
shapes, as if some great explosion had upheaved the
frozen ocean, and the fragments had come down in
wild confusion, like the ruins of a crystal city. Then
the sun gradually melts the towers, and they assume
shapes of dazzling beauty, palaces of glass, silver
domes, and shining battlements—making us to wonder
that so much beauty and magnificence are seemingly
wasted in these dreary solitudes.

Nestled charmingly among the hills is the sweet village
of Interlaken. The plain which it adorns stretches
from Lake Thun to Lake Brienz, and the quiet retreat
it furnishes is improved by hundreds of English people,
who make it a summer residence. It combines
two advantages, very rarely blended in this world—it
is <i>cheap</i> and <i>genteel</i>. A large number of neat boarding-houses,
some of them aspiring to the rank of first-class
hotels, are scattered along the main street of the
village; and at the <i>Hotel des Alpen</i>, the largest establishment
and admirably kept, the traveller may find
good rooms and board for a dollar a day, and at even
less than that if he is disposed to be very economical.
We had crossed the Wengern Alp and passed the vale
of Grindelwald; had seen an avalanche come down
from the side of the Jungfrau, and been amused with
the little cascade called the Staubach, about which
poets and printers have gone into ecstasies; and we
were glad to find so quiet, beautiful, and civilized a
spot in which to sit down for a few days and rest.

While we were at Interlaken we made a beautiful
excursion on Lake Brienz to the Giesbach Fall. It
has some peculiarities that claim for it the very first
rank among the falls of Switzerland. See the little
stream that issues as from a cleft in the rock, nearly
a thousand feet above the waters of the lake. Then
among the dark evergreens the white flood comes swelling
and plunging into secret abysses where the eye
can not search its hidings, but it rises again with a
widened torrent, and now spreads a broad bosom of
waters over a mighty precipice; and here a bridge has
been thrown across in front of the falls, and a gallery
cut away behind it, so that it may be circumvented
by the visitor who is provided with an overcoat of
India rubber, or is willing to take a thorough sponging
for sake of the submarine excursion. When I had
completed the circuit, a lady was regretting that she
could not venture on the tour, but her scruples were
instantly removed when I offered her my water-proof,
and in a few minutes she returned “charmed” with
her trip. Once more the swollen mass of waters
plunges over the rocks and shoots out into the lake, in
one of the most romantic and beautiful regions that is
to be found in this wildly beautiful land.

.sp 2

I pass over the experiences of a few days’ travel, and
come suddenly to the summit of the Col de Balm.

Mont Blanc is in sight! Not a faint and doubtful
view of a peak among a hundred peaks, but the monarch
of the Alps stands there—a king in his glory,
revealed from his summit to the base. A cloud is
gathered like a halo on his head; but it rises and
vanishes as we look upon it with silent admiration
and awe. Around him are the Aiguilles or Needles,
bare pinnacles of rock stretching up like guards into
the heavens, and between are the glaciers—reflecting
now the rays of the noonday sun, and among them
the <i>Mer de Glace</i>—winding along down the gorges,
and resting their cold feet in the vale below.

.il id=i06 fn=i_b_245.jpg w=500
.ca UNDER THE GEISBACH FALLS.

Afterward I saw Mont Blanc from its base, and
sought other heights from which it might be surveyed,
but I could find nothing comparable to the view from
the <i>Col de Balm</i>. There it stands, towering fifteen
thousand eight hundred and ten feet toward the sky,
the loftiest summit in Europe, with thirty-four glaciers
around it; and as I gazed, it was a strange
question to discuss—but one that might well be
argued till sundown—is old Ocean, or Niagara, a
sublimer sight?

It seems so near the sky that the blue firmament
kisses its brow. It is so far off, yet so near, so bright
and pure, that the angels might be sporting on its
summit and be safe from the intrusion of men. It is
a <i>solemn</i> mountain. Even the hills of Syria and
Palestine, on which I afterward gazed, Lebanon and
Hermon, Carmel and Horeb, with their hallowed
memories clustering on them, were not more impressive
than this hoary hill—forever clothed in white
raiment, standing there like an ivory throne for the
King of Kings!

We went down into the vale of Chamouni, and at
evening saw the stars like diamonds sparkling in the
crown of the monarch, and then the moonbeams fell
all cold upon his crest. We rose the next morning
early, and saw the summit of Mont Blanc in a blaze
of glory long before the dwellers in the vale had seen
the rays of the rising sun.

And then we left Switzerland.

.fm

.fn #
The preceding letters were originally addressed to the New York Observer.
This chapter, embracing a general view of the country, with pictures of scenes
already noticed, was contributed to Harper’s Monthly Magazine.
.fn-



.sp 4
.h2 id=ch14
CHAPTER XIV.||SAXON SWYTZ.

.in +3
.ti -3
A model guide—The Bastei—Banditti of old—A cataract to order—Scaling a
Rampart—Konigstein—the Kuhstall—the Great Winterberg—Prebisch
Thor—Looking Back.
.in
.sp 2

.di i_b_247.jpg 100 170 1.1
In a corner of Saxony is a miniature
Switzerland. They call it Saxon
Switzerland; perhaps the name is not
well chosen, for it has one feature
only of Swiss scenery—exceeding
beauty. Only three days are required
to see it, and two will give a good
traveller all the more prominent
points, in a series of views, the romantic
loveliness of which will linger a lifetime in
the memory of one who has seen them. The Elbe is
now navigated by little steamboats, which English
enterprise introduced, but a better way to reach
Saxon Swytz, if you are pressed for time, is to go
with us by rail to Rathen, and there strike off into
the mountains. A local guide must be had at once,
before you take a step. It was now the height of the
travelling season, and on a fine morning in July we
found ourselves at a small tavern on the banks of the
Elbe, with half a dozen men about us pressing their
claims to be employed as guides among the mountains.
“Do you speak English?” we inquired of one:
to which he answered “Yes,” and this with the frequent
exclamation “look here” proved to be the
Alpha and Omega of our German’s knowledge of
English. He had a book of certificates which former
travellers had given him, and as they were sure he
could not read one of them, they had very freely
commended him as ignorant, stupid, temperate and
faithful, acquainted with the country, and probably
no worse a guide than the rest. He was our man.
We could get out of him all that was necessary, and
as he pleaded hard for employment, and knew three
words of English more than the rest, we took him,
and in five minutes he took us into a small boat to
pull us over the Elbe. Instantly the bewitching
scenery began to surround us. The river was here
so winding that we could see a little way only, either
up or down, but the lofty banks rose so abruptly from
the water and the rocks, in the midst of which
evergreens were growing, hung so fearfully above us,
that we seemed to be suddenly borne into a land of
enchantment. We landed on the other side, a
“house of refreshment,” where German ladies and
gentlemen were recruiting themselves with beer,
which like an overflowing stream appears to come
from some exhaustless fountain. Now we are to
decide between a pedestrian tour and mules. We
were not long in making up our minds, and soon we
were off on the beasts; sorry beasts they were;
better men than Balaam might have wished for a
sword, or some more fitting weapon to make them
go. They were indifferent to all minor arguments,
such as words and kicks, and only conscious of the
<i>a posteriori</i> mode of reasoning, to which the muleteer
in the rear continually resorted. We left the common
road, and by a narrow path commenced the ascent to
one of the most celebrated and splendid points of
observation, the Bastei. On either side of us as we
are ascending, huge precipices frown and deep grottoes
in which the fairy spirits of these forests may be
supposed to dwell, invite us to rest as weary of the
upward way. Now a waterfall, beautiful as water
in motion always is, and picturesque as a cascade in
the green woods must be, tempts us to linger and
take the spray on our heated brows. Through dense
shades of evergreen forests, by a path so steep, at
times, that it is difficult to keep your seat in the
saddle, we toil on, and in the course of an hour have
triumphed over the hardships of the hill, and have
reached the summit of the loftiest bastion in the
world. It is as perpendicular as a wall that has been
reared for defence. The rock on which we were
standing projects from the front of the precipice, and
we are hanging six hundred feet above the Elbe.
The river winds round the base of the mountain, and
both up and down the stream for many miles the eye
rests on similar heights on the same side that we are
standing. Behind us, Ossa upon Pelion seems to be
piled. Giant rocks stand up there in solemn and
solitary grandeur, as if by some great convulsion of
nature the earth had been torn from their sides, and
they were left to brave earthquakes and thunderbolts
with their naked heads and sides exposed to perpetual
storms. Yet the bravery of man has bridged
the horrid chasms that yawn between these separated
cliffs, and they have in times past, been the hiding
places of banditti, who from these heights could
watch the Elbe, and make their descent upon the
hapless navigator of the peaceful stream. On one of
the rocks is a huge boulder so evenly balanced on the
very pinnacle that it has been called “Napoleon’s
Crown,” and another from a fancied resemblance,
“the Turk’s head,” and all of them have titles more
or less fitting. Across the river, and in front of us,
the plain spreads wide and rises as it recedes from
the shore till it meets a range of wooded mountains.
From the midst of this plain there rise immense
cones, suddenly and remarkably, strange formations, a
study for the geologist, probably left there when all
the surrounding masses were worn away by the Elbe
in making its way through this mountainous region.
The country is full of legends connected with each
and all of these strange columns, the summits of
which are sometimes crowned with castles, and one
of them, the Lilienstein, is so perpendicular and lofty,
that the Elector of Saxony and King of Poland,
when he had scaled its heights, left a record of his
memorable exploit. In the hiding places of this
wild and rugged rock, the spirits of the woods are
supposed to hover over concealed treasures. “A
holy nun miraculously transported from the irregularities
of her convent to the summit of the Normenstein,
that she might spend her days in prayer and
purity in its caverns, is commemorated in the name
of the rock, and the ‘<i>Jungfernsprung</i>,’ or leap of the
Virgin, perpetuates the memory of the Saxon maid
who when pursued by a brutal lustling threw herself
from the brink of its hideous precipice to die unpolluted.”—<sc>Russell.</sc>

<i>Konigstein</i>, nearly a thousand feet high, with its
impregnable fortress, we shall attempt this afternoon,
and enter it with a flag of truce, as it was never taken
by force. We came up here for the sake of view, and
fully repaid for the toil of the ride, we are now prepared
to descend by another route, when we are told
for the first time that the mules are not for us to ride
down, we must foot it, and the mules be driven by
the same road they came up. Through the wildest
of all wild gorges our winding way led us, at the base
of jagged rocks of fearful height, out of the broken
breasts of which huge trees were growing, threatening
to fall, yet clinging for life to the crevices in which
their roots were fastened. Now and then a scared
eagle would scream and soar away from his nest, but
rarely did a sound except the murmur of water, and
the sighing of the air through the narrow defile disturb
the deep stillness of that solitude. That projecting
rock, with its adjacent pillars of stone, is called
the Devil’s Pulpit, and that, the Throne, and so other
points of peculiar configuration have names more or
less fanciful, which a lively imagination has given
them. Suddenly, we came upon a family of peasants,
who have a hut under the shelter of the rocks, and a
few articles of refreshment for weary travellers;
sweet milk, and bread and cheese, and a bottle or two
of liquor—but they are chiefly and decidedly in the
cold water line; they are in the cataract business!
The little stream that takes this gorge in its way to
the Elbe, at this point would make a leap of some
twenty feet among the rocks. With an economy that
would do honor to American foresight, these people
have made a dam across the rivulet before it falls, and
thus accumulating the waters, have them ready for a
grand splurge, when a party come along who are
willing to pay a few pence for the pleasure of seeing
the performance. One of our people gave the word
of command in German, of which a free translation
would be “Let her slide,” and down came the young
Niagara. But for the ludicrous idea of an artificial
cataract in the mountains, the sight would have been
very pretty. The gorge hitherto had been so narrow
and deep, that the sun never shines to the bottom,
and no flowers ever cheer its gloom; but now the sun
lighted up the falling drops, making them like great
diamonds, as we from behind the sheet looked out
upon the extempore waterfall. It was a walk of four
or five miles, through such scenes, to the place from
which we had started, and here we awaited the coming
of a little steamer which was creeping along the
banks to pick up passengers. It picked us up, and
dropped us in a few minutes at Konigstein, or the
<i>King’s Stone</i>. The little town with a thousand people
in it, would not deserve a call, but it is in our
way to the fortress on the summit of the rocky height
behind. The road is paved all the way with large
square stones, making a carriage path, up which enormous
guns are dragged for its defence. To this day
it boasts of never having fallen into the hands of the
enemy. Napoleon, with incredible toil, carried some
of his heaviest pieces of ordnance to the top of <i>Lilienstein</i>,
but could not reach it with his balls. Much of
the distance up which we toiled, the road is cut
through a living rock, which rises a solid wall on
either side, and winds around the hill, till we come
to a wooden bridge over an awful chasm, which separates
the passage from the cliff on which the fortress
stands, on a platform two miles in circuit, inaccessible
except to friends, or to foes with wings. One portcullis
passed, and we have only come to the gate.
Iron spikes projecting from the stonework threaten us
as we approach. At the gate, soldiers are looking
through the port-holes, and challenge us to stand.
They take our cards and passports to the commander,
and soon return with permission for us to enter. But
once admitted within the massive gate, we have still a
long bridge across the moat to pass, and then by a
covered passage at an angle of forty-five degrees, over
a stone road, up which cannon are drawn by a windlass,
we come out on the summit of the hill to a scene
of transcendent beauty, and of the richest historic
interest. The ground is neatly laid out in walks and
gardens; there are fields of pasture for herds of cattle
and of grain raised for the support of the garrison.
Their unfailing supply of water is drawn from a well
<i>eighteen hundred feet deep</i>! We held a mirror to the
sun, and sent the reflected light away down into that
mysterious depth, and watched it sporting on the
waters. Then we poured a glass of water into the
well, and in <i>thirty seconds</i> by the watch, the sound
returned to our listening ears. Sound travels eleven
hundred and forty-two feet in a second, and would
therefore be less than two seconds in coming up; so
that if our measure of time was correct, it must have
taken the water nearly half a minute to travel down to
the surface from which it had been drawn. We drank
of that well and found the water cool and delightful.
Standing on the ramparts, which are defended by
enormous guns, we overlooked the plains on one hand,
the river and the romantic hills of Saxon Switzerland
on the other. Again the columnal rocks arrested our
attention, more peculiar now that we are nearer. Far,
very far higher than the loftiest cathedral spire, and
not broader at the base, they rise in solitary grandeur,
where the Great Architect of the earth first placed
them, and where they will stand till all the cathedrals
and fortresses and pyramids of man’s building have
crumbled into dust.

We bought a few pieces of Bohemian glass ware
as souvenirs of this visit, and then reluctantly turning
away from the scene, which seemed more beautiful
the longer we dwelt upon it—so it is with beauty
ever—we reluctantly came down.

A German full of humor, a rare sort of German,
for they are not addicted to the humorous at home or
abroad, had joined us in our pedestrian tour to
Konigstein; and having just come down the river as
we were going up, he gave us the information we
asked for of the upper country. He spoke a
“leetel English,” and that made his answers more
amusing.

“Which is the best hotel for us in Ichandau?” we
inquired.

“They is dree hotels, one is so bad as de toder,”
said he.

“And what shall we find at Winterberg?”

“Noding but gray sand-stone and sheating
strangers.”

With this very unpromising prospect, we waited
for the steamer to come along to take us to Ichandau
and Winterberg.

Steaming on the Elbe is a very small affair; a narrow
boat with a long nose, moves on at the rate of
four or five miles an hour, and stops at the end of a
plank or two put out from the shore for a wharf.
One of these filled with pleasure travellers in the aft
and the long bows covered with peasantry, touched
at Konigstein, and received us. It was near sunset.
We were often in the deep shadows of the mountains,
and then through the openings, or as the circuitous
river brought us into the day again, the declining
sun streamed upon us with exceeding beauty. Tired
with the hard day’s work, having mounted the Bastei
on one side of the Elbe, and Konigstein on the other,
I was glad to lie off upon a bench and enjoy the
luxury of this cool delicious hour. Ichandau
charmingly dropped down among the mountains, is
an old town, but only remarkable as the point from
which to set off on exploring expeditions into the
interior of Saxon Switzerland. The three hotels
were filled with company, who were spending their
evening in eating and drinking at small tables on
the piazzas, or under the shade trees, a practice of
which the Germans are more fond than any other
people I have met. We found beds in a great ball-room,
with low partitions running between them, so
that when the room was needed for dancing, these
could be readily removed. I was in want of some
refreshments after the fatigues of the day, and when
the various drinks that I called for were not to be had,
the waiter asked me if I would have “Yahmah Kah
rhoom,” which I declined after finding that he meant
Jamaica rum. Without any night-cap of the sort,
and spite of more noise than would have been agreeable
if we had not been so weary, we had a good night
of it, and rose with the sun to continue our
pilgrimage. A carriage was ready for us, to convey
us six miles from Ichandau, through a romantic glen,
wide enough to afford beautiful meadows on both
sides of a stream, by the side of which a good road
was leading us into the mountains. The women
were at work making hay, scores of them, and not a
man to be seen. The brightest of Cole’s landscapes
among the Kaatskill mountains came to my mind as
we rode on, and admired the green hill sides; then,
as we advanced, gnarled trees stood out upon the
rocks, immense piles, jagged, riven, blasted and
heaped one upon another in such orderly confusion,
that it seemed as if architecture had done its worst to
make towers for giants here.

Our ride terminated at <i>Peishll Swarl</i>, where we
were surrounded by a troop of men who had horses
to let, and in their German tongue, they clamored
most importunately for us to engage them. Our
friend, the Rev. Dr. K., being of German origin, and
better skilled in the language than the rest of us, we
left to make the bargain, while we selected the best
horses for ourselves with that beautiful selfishness so
common to the human species. As we deserved, and
as he deserved, we got the worst of the lot, and he
was soon mounted on a handsome pony, that easily
led the party, the whole day. Now it may be known
to some who read this, that Dr. K. is not a very tall
divine, but what he lacks of being gigantic in height,
he makes up in breadth, so that seated upon this
little animal about four feet high, and riding up a
steep mountain pass, when seen from before, he
looked like a horse with a man’s head, but when we
gazed upward at him from behind, we saw a man
with a horse’s tail. I had selected a good looking
beast, but it had a lady’s saddle to which I objected,
as it was “Fur damen,” for women: but the owner
promptly met the objection by pulling away the <i>rest</i>,
and crying out with a laugh “Fur herren,” for men.
Immediately on mounting we struck into the woods,
and soon into a narrow pass where the rocks had
been cleft asunder just far enough for a path for a
single horseman; a hundred steps lead up to
the summit of a lofty hill whence a fine view is had
of the columnal rocks and numerous peaks of mountains,
whose hard names would not be remembered
if we were to repeat them. On this height is the
famous <i>Kuhstall</i>, or in English <i>Cow-stall</i>, a cave in
the rock, to which in the Thirty Years’ war, the
peasants in the plains below were in the habit of
driving their cattle for safety, and in these all but
inaccessible solitudes, the Protestant Christians fled
from persecution, and hid themselves as their primitive
brethren did, in dens and caves of the earth.
One of these recesses, more retired and better
sheltered than the rest, had the name of the
“Woman’s bed.” Who can tell the sufferings, who
can tell the joys that the people of God have known
in these high places? No cathedral service could be
more sublime than prayer and praise on the mountain
tops, and in the grottoes of these rocky
heights, where now the weary traveller from a land
on the other side of the sea, sits down and recalls the
story of those times that “tried men’s souls.”
Through a narrow fissure in the rock we ascended to
a platform that makes the roof of the Kuhstall.
Before us was a valley surrounded by mighty rocks
and pine-covered hills, an amphitheatre in which the
present population of the earth could stand, and it
required but little stretch of the imagination to
believe that a strong voice could be heard by the
multitude so assembled. My servant led my horse to
the edge of the precipice, many hundred feet high,
and he planted his feet firmly on the edge, as if he
were accustomed to the spot, and there stood for me
to enjoy the glorious scene. On this lofty and far
away height, some women had a stand for the sale of
strawberries and cream, the taste of which did not
interfere with the beauties of the prospect, as I sat
on my horse eating, and gazing, and making these
notes. But we cannot be on the mount always. We
crossed the valley, and on the narrow road met
parties of German travellers smoking as they trudged
along, women and some children, making the tour
of the mountains on foot, and in the course of a
couple of hours we commenced the ascent of the
Great Winterberg, and climbed it to the summit.

Here at the height of one thousand seven hundred
feet above the sea we found a good hotel, with every
comfort for the entertainment of travellers and a
fine lookout from which may be had the grandest
sight in Saxon Switzerland. I wrote the names of
sixteen noble peaks that stood up around me, with
their thick green foliage, the intervening valleys
dense with forest, the beautiful Elbe silently circling
the base of the mountains, and the pillars of stone
rising like sentinels away off in the plains beyond.
Our way lay through the thick forest, as we came
down to the <i>Prebisch Thor</i> or Gate, a mighty arch, a
hundred feet broad, and sixty-five feet high, a
wonderful freak of nature, not so lofty as the Natural
Bridge of Virginia, but more impressive from the
position it occupies, away up in these mountains,
more than a thousand feet above the river. It might
be the gate of the world! How mean the splendid
arches of Conquerors, compared with this which the
King of Kings had reared. I exclaimed with reverence
as I saw it, “Lift up your heads, O ye gates,
and be ye lifted up ye everlasting doors, and the
King of glory shall come in.” A score of visitors
were here before us. A row of romantic cottages,
clinging like eagles’ nests, to the ledges of the rocks,
furnish rest and refreshment to the pilgrims, and we
sat down in sight of this stupendous wonder of
nature, and dined, while we sought to take in at the
same time, an image of it which we should never
lose. Underneath the arch ambitious travellers have
vied with each other in seeing how high they could
inscribe their names, and some have made the
records so as to resemble tombstones, rows of which
are cut into the solid rock. Visitors from many different
lands, have in their several languages left their
impressions in the book which is kept here for the
purpose, and we added our names and a faint
transcript of our feelings to the records of the
Prebisch Thor. The descent was by several hundred
steps, sometimes of wood, then of stone, and again
of earth, which we made on foot, while the horses
were led by a longer road around. As we came
down into the valley, we met—for we were now in
Bohemia, under Austrian rule—numerous beggars
with various claims upon our charity. Among them
was an old woman who stretched out a pair of naked
arms dried to the bone and the color of bronze, her
feet and the lower part of her legs, her head and
breast were bare, and all so dried and dark, so unlike
a woman that it made me sick to look at her. “Can
a woman come to that?” I asked myself, as I gave my
servant some money for the old crone, and hurried
on for fear she would get before me again to thank
me. In the stream which comes leaping down from
the mountain, were women and children wading,
with hooks in their hands to catch the floating bits
of wood, and bring them ashore for fuel. The narrow
defile through which we passed was picturesque, and
the great mountains behind us often called us back
to look at the heights where we had stood, and so
now looking back, and now plunging on and down,
into the regions of human dwellings, by little mills
on the leaping stream, and by the side of cottages
where some taste appeared in vines and flowers, we
arrived at <i>Hirniskretchen</i>, on the Elbe. Here we
crossed the river, and by the railroad which comes
along on the other side, we reached in a few moments
the station at <i>Bodenbach</i> the frontier town of
<i>Austria</i>. The train is detained an hour, while the
passports, and luggage of all the passengers are
examined with that minuteness which is always suffered
in small towns more inconveniently than in
cities. Some of the ladies’ trunks made such revelations
of articles of dress and jewelry, that no
protestations of their being designed only for personal
use were of any avail. It was impossible in the
eyes of these simple officers, that women could need
so many gloves, and laces and bracelets, and they
were all examined even to the smallest boxes of
“<i>bijouterie</i>” which could be found. We had no
difficulty whatever, being very slightly loaded with
baggage of any sort, especially of that sort which
custom houses, those pests of nations, are so apt to
challenge. At last we were pronounced all right,
and the train set off, through a beautiful country, a
massive church standing on one side of the river, a
towering castle on the other; now rushing by Aussig,
a precipice and gorge of frightful height, where the
road hugs the rock into the side of which it is cut,
and so through numerous pleasing villages, we are
hurried on to the ancient city of <sc>Prague</sc>.


.pb

.ce
<xl>Sheldon and Company.</xl>
.hr
.h2 id=pub
A Select List||<s>OF</s>||PUBLICATIONS.

.hr 30%


Messrs. <sc>Sheldon & Company</sc> beg leave to say that their
publications can generally be found at all Book Stores, News
Depots, and Religious Depositories. When not obtainable at
these places, any book on the list will be forwarded, prepaid
by mail, on receipt of the retail prices annexed to each book.

Special attention is called to the list of School and College
Text Books. Samples of these are sent to Teachers and
Educators by mail prepaid, on receipt of one half the prices
annexed.


.nf c
<sc>New York</sc>:
SHELDON & COMPANY, 115 NASSAU ST.,
<i>Publishers and Booksellers</i>.
1860.
.nf-

.pb

.ce
<l>Sheldon and Co.’s List</l>


.ta l:61 r:5
J. P. Thompson, D.D.|
\ \ The Christian Graces. 16mo.,|75
\ \ Memoir of the Rev. D. T. Stoddard. 12mo.,|1\ 00

S. Irenæus Prime, D.D.|
\ \ The Bible in the Levant. 16mo.,|75

William J. Hoge, D.D.|
\ \ Blind Bartimeus. 16mo.,|75

Rev. W. P. Balfern.|
\ \ Glimpses of Jesus. 16mo.,|60
\ \ Lessons from Jesus. 16mo.,|75

Rev. Henry M. Field.|
\ \ From Copenhagen to Venice. 12mo.,|1\ 00

Rev. Alfred S. Patton.|
\ \ Losing and Taking of Mansoul. 12mo.,|1\ 00

Mrs. Maria T. Richards.|
\ \ Life in Israel. 12mo.,|1\ 00

Manton Eastburn, D.D.|
\ \ Thornton’s Family Prayers. 12mo.,|75
\ \ Thornton’s Family Prayers. Fine ed., red edges,|1\ 00

John Dowling, D.D.|
\ \ The Power of Illustration. 18mo.,|30
\ \ The Judson Memorial. 16mo.,|60

Hermann Olshausen, D.D.|
\ \ Commentaries on the New Testament. 6 vols., 8vo.|
\ \ \ \ Ed. A. C. Kendrick, D.D.,|12 00
\ \ The same. 8vo., sheep,|13 50
\ \ The same. Half calf, gilt or antique,|18\ 00

Augustus Neander, D.D.|
\ \ Planting and Training of the Christian Church.|
\ \ \ \ Edited by E. G. Robinson, D.D. (<i>in press</i>).|
\ \ Commentaries, John, Philippians & James. 8vo.,|1\ 75
\ \ History of Christian Dogmas (<i>in press</i>).|

Adolphe Monod, D.D.|
\ \ The Life and Mission of Woman. 12mo.,|50
\ \ Sermons—Monod, Krummacher, Tholuck, &c.,|1\ 00

W. W. Everts, D.D.|
\ \ The Bible Manual. 12mo.,|1\ 50
\ \ Childhood, its Promise, &c. 12mo.,|75
\ \ Manhood, its Duties, &c. 12mo.,|1\ 00
\ \ The Pastor’s Hand-book. 18mo.,|50
\ \ The Sanctuary. 18mo.,|42
\ \ Scripture Text Book and Treasury. 12mo.,|75

Rev. Chas. Buck.|
\ \ Anecdotes—Religious and Entertaining. 8vo.,|1\ 50

Mrs. H. C. Conant.|
\ \ History of the English Bible. 12mo.,|1\ 25

Rev. C. H. Spurgeon.|
\ \ Sermons, 1st Series. 12mo.,|1\ 00
\ \ Sermons, 2d  Series. 12mo.,|1\ 00
\ \ Sermons, 3d  Series. 12mo.,|1\ 00
\ \ Sermons, 4th Series. 12mo.,|1\ 00
\ \ Sermons, 5th Series. 12mo.,|1\ 00
\ \ Sermons, 6th Series. 12mo.,|1\ 00
\ \ The Saint and Saviour. 12mo.,|1\ 00
\ \ Gems Selected from his Sermons. 12mo.,|1\ 00
\ \ Life and Ministry, 12mo.,|60
\ \ Smooth Stones from Ancient Brooks. 16mo.,|60
\ \ Communion of the Saints (<i>in press</i>).|

Francis Wayland, D.D.|
\ \ Sermons to the Churches. 12mo.,|85
\ \ Principles and Practices of Baptists. 12mo.,|1\ 00
\ \ Domestic Slavery (Fuller & W.). 18mo.,|50

Richard Fuller, D.D.|
\ \ Sermons, 1st Series, 12mo. (<i>in press</i>).|

Mrs. Emily C. Judson.|
\ \ Memoir of Sarah B. Judson. 18mo.,|60
\ \ An Olio, Poems. 12mo.,|75

Geo. C. Baldwin, D.D.|
\ \ Representative Women. 12mo.,|1\ 00

Mrs. S. R. Ford.|
\ \ Grace Truman. 12mo.,|1\ 00

Rev. Louis L. Noble.|
\ \ Life and Works of Thomas Cole. 12mo.,|1\ 25
\ \ The Lady Angeline and other Poems. 12mo.,|75

Rev. Sidney Dyer.|
\ \ Songs and Ballads for the Household. 12mo.,|75

Mrs. Mary A. Denison.|
\ \ Gracie Amber, a Novel. 12mo.,|1\ 25

Harriet E. Bishop.|
\ \ Floral Home; or, First Years of Minnesota,|1\ 00

Rev. Joseph Barnard.|
\ \ Wisdom, &c., of the Ancient Philosophers,|75

Mrs. A. Lincoln Phelps.|
\ \ Ida Norman. Illustrated. 12mo.,|1\ 25

David Millard.|
\ \ Travels in Egypt, Arabia Petræa, &c. 12mo.,|1\ 00

John McIntosh.|
\ \ The North American Indians. 8vo.,|1\ 50

Rev. William Arthur.|
\ \ Origin and Derivation of Family Names,|1\ 25

Eliphalet Nott, D.D.|
\ \ Lectures on Temperance. 12mo.,|1\ 00

Robert Turnbull, D.D.|
\ \ Life Pictures from a Pastor’s note book,|1\ 00

Rev. Matthew Mead.|
\ \ The Almost Christian. 18mo.,|45

John Frost, LL.D.|
\ \ Wonders of History. 8vo.,|2\ 00

T. J. Farnham.|
\ \ California and Oregon. 8vo.,|1\ 50
\ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ ———————|
\ \ Life of Spencer H. Cone, D.D.,|1\ 25
\ \ The Life and Works of Lorenzo Dow,|1\ 50
\ \ Father Clark, the Pioneer Preacher,|63
\ \ Homœopathic Practice, by M. Freleigh, M.D.,|1\ 50
\ \ The Napoleon Dynasty. Illustrated, 8vo.,|2\ 50
\ \ Marble Worker’s Manual,|1\ 00
\ \ Memoir of Thomas Spencer,|60
\ \ The N. Y. Pulpit, Revival of 1858,|1\ 00
\ \ The Baptist Library. 8vo., sheep,|3\ 50
\ \ The Living Epistle. Tyree,|60
\ \ Rollin’s Ancient History. 8vo.,|1\ 50
\ \ The Words of Jesus and Faithful Promiser,|37

Mrs. Thomas Geldart.|
\ \ Daily Thoughts for a Child. 16mo.,|50
\ \ Truth is Everything. 16mo.,|50
\ \ Emilie the Peacemaker. 16mo.,|50
\ \ Sunday Morning Thoughts. 16mo.,|50
\ \ Sunday Evening Thoughts. 16mo.,|50

S. G. Goodrich (Peter Parley).|
\ \ The Cottage Library. 10 vols., 18mo.,|3\ 75
\ \ Picture Play Books. 4to.,|75

Francis L. Hawks, D.D., LL.D.|
\ \ Richard the Lion Hearted. 16mo.,|75
\ \ Oliver Cromwell. 16mo.,|75
\ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ ———————|
\ \ Aunt Mary’s Stories. 12 vols.,|3\ 00
\ \ The Little Commodore. 16mo.,|75
\ \ A Treasury of Pleasure Books. Gilt,|1\ 50
\ \ Indestructible Pleasure Books, each,|20
\ \ The Illuminated Linen Primer,|20
\ \ The Farmer Boy’s Alphabet,|20
\ \ The Scripture Alphabet,|20
\ \ Little Annie’s Ladder to Learning,|40

John F. Stoddard, A.M.|
\ \ Juvenile Mental Arithmetic,|12
\ \ American Intellectual Arithmetic,|20
\ \ Practical Arithmetic,|40
\ \ Philosophical Arithmetic,|60
\ \ Key to Intel. and Prac. Arithmetic,|50

Stoddard & Henkle (Prof. W. D.)|
\ \ Elementary Algebra,|75
\ \ University Algebra,|1\ 50

J. Russell Webb, A.M.|
\ \ Normal Primer,|5
\ \ Primary Lessons, a Series of three Cards,|1\ 00
\ \ The Word Method Primer,|15
\ \ Normal Reader, No. 1,|12
\ \ Normal Reader, No. 2,|25
\ \ Normal Reader, No. 3,|38
\ \ Normal Reader, No. 4,|50
\ \ Normal Reader, No. 5,|75

Edward Hazen, A.M.|
\ \ The Speller and Definer,|20
\ \ Symbolical Spelling Book. Complete,|20
\ \ Symbolical Spelling Book. Part 1st, 288 Cuts,|10
\ \ Symbolical Spelling Book. Part 2d, 265 Cuts,|10

J. L. Dagg, D.D.|
\ \ Elements of Moral Science. 12mo.|1\ 00

Prof. Jean Gustave Keetels.|
\ \ A New Method of Learning the French Language,|1\ 00
\ \ A Collegiate Course in the French Language,|1\ 00
\ \ Key to the New Method,|40
\ \ Key to the Collegiate Course (<i>in press</i>).|

J. R. Loomis, D.D.|
\ \ Elements of Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene,|75
\ \ Elements of Geology,|75

Oliver B. Goldsmith.|
\ \ Copy Books in Five Numbers, each,|12
\ \ Gems of Penmanship, boards,|2\ 00
\ \ Double-Entry Book-keeping. 8vo.,|75
\ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ ———————|
\ \ Exhibition Speaker, Fitzgerald,|75
\ \ Normal School Song Book,|38
\ \ History of the United States, Peabody,|75
\ \ Nelson’s Copy Books, 5 numbers, each,|10
\ \ United States Speller, Miles,|12
\ \ Fitch’s Mapping Plates,|30
\ \ Parley’s Geography,|30
\ \ The University Drawing Book,|3\ 50

HOUSEHOLD LIBRARY.|
\ \ Life and Martyrdom of Joan of Arc. By Michelet,|50
\ \ Life of Robert Burns. By Thomas Carlyle,|50
\ \ Life and Teachings of Socrates. By George Grote,|50
\ \ Life of Columbus. By Alphonse de Lamartine,|50
\ \ Life of Frederick the Great. By Lord Macaulay,|50
\ \ Life of William Pitt. By Lord Macaulay,|50
\ \ Life of Mahomet. By Gibbon,|50
\ \ Life of Luther. By Chev. Bunsen,|50
\ \ Life of Oliver Cromwell. By A. de Lamartine,|50
\ \ Life of Torquato Tasso. By G. H. Wiffen,|50
\ \ Life of Peter the Great. Compiled by the Editor, 2 vols.,|1\ 00
\ \ Life of Milton. By Prof. Masson,|50
\ \ Life of Thomas A’Becket. By H. H. Milman, D.D.,|50
\ \ Life of Hannibal. By Dr. Arnold,|50
\ \ Life of Vittoria Colonna. By T. A. Trollope,|50
\ \ Life of Julius Cæsar. By Henry G. Liddell, D.D.,|50
\ \ Life of Mary Stuart. By A. de Lamartine (<i>in press</i>),|50
.ta-

.if h
.li
<div class="tnotes">
  <p><b>Transcriber's Note:</b></p>
  <p>Some presumed printer's errors have been corrected. In particular,
punctuation has been normalized and duplicate words were removed.
Other corrections are listed below with the original text (top) and the
replacement text (bottom):</p>

  <p>Gerni (Contents)<br />
     Gemmi</p>

  <p>herren (Chapter I)<br />
     Herren</p>

  <p>Schaffhaussen (Chapter I)<br />
      Schaffhausen</p>

  <p>intere t (Chapter II)<br />
     interest</p>

   <p>caries (Chapter III)<br />
      carries</p>

  <p>withont (Chapter IV)<br />
     without</p>

  <p>fouud (Chapter V)<br />
     found</p>

   <p>Agazziz (Chapter VI)<br />
   Agassiz</p>

   <p>eating-roon (Chapter VI)<br />
      eating-room</p>

  <p>cotages (Chapter VII)<br />
     cottages</p>

  <p>Reichenback (Chapter VII)<br />
     Reichenbach</p>

  <p>Alpback (Chapter VII)<br />
     Alpbach</p>

  <p>white lace vails (Chapter VII)<br />
     white lace veils</p>

  <p>replendent (Chapter VIII)<br />
     resplendent</p>

  <p>Grindenwald (Chapter VIII)<br />
     Grindelwald</p>

  <p>visiters (Chapter IX)<br />
     visitors</p>

  <p>puplis (Chapter IX)<br />
     pupils</p>

  <p>businesss (Chapter X)<br />
     business</p>

  <p>T56<sub>M</sub>[symbol] (Chapter XII)<br />
     The</p>

  <p>benificent (Chapter XIII)<br />
     beneficent</p>

  <p>Grindewald (Chapter XIII)<br />
     Grindelwald</p>

  <p>fearfuly (Chapter XIV)<br />
     fearfully</p>
</div>
.li-
.if-